Maybe some of you will remember The Malchicks, the early/mid-’90s shoegaze band based in Auckland, held in regard as New Zealand’s answer to My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Ride.
With an EP and an album, both CD-only, under their belt, via the still active Failsafe Records, that, most likely, but I always refused to buy that ‘cold’ unattractive format, barely reached the European stores.
While the band have compiled all their remastered material, demos included, into a double-CD album, “Everything”, at the end of last year, Malchicks vocalist and bass player Coralie and long-term collaborator Stìobhan Lothian have started their own nugaze project called Lomarðian, debuting with the intriguing tune “Unravelled”, a compelling sort of gloomier and more introspective version of The Stone Roses’ “I Wanna Be Adored” with angelical vocals on top, included in our last May’s playlist.
The duo have just unveiled the slightly folksy and psychedelic, as well as poignant and delicate, gaze-y new single “Unseen” on Imaginal Discs, where, as in the previous one, the dense, intense and shimmering instrumental texture constantly pulses and churns like a slow flow of lava beneath, to give form and shape to the inner turbulence and melancholy imbued by the emotionally torn mesmerizing vocals.
The introspective lyrics unravel in a five-year relationship wrought in uphill battles with only one hurdle left to cross as the question arises, “will you look or will you run?” into the inevitable “Unseen.”
“Unseen” slowly weaves a resonant and creeping long evocative, murky thread wrapped around intricate crystalline lysergic guitar strings, that achingly slowly smoulder, glisten and mourn, as they swell and fade, subtly underpinned by deep hearty bass palpitations and simmering tight and scattered percussive patterns, wrapping and wriggling emotionally around soft peaceful female vocalizations, writhing in agony and ecstasy, that float and whisper with euphoric bliss, haunted by ripples of turmoil, in a distant ethereal haze of perturbed awakening.
Keep up with Lomarðian:
