you resource for all things shoegaze & dream pop.

02 January 2013

WTSH Shoegaze Spotlight on the Strangeways Radio blog - This week's Gaze: A.R. Kane.

WTSH Shoegaze Spotlight 
on the Strangeways Radio Blog: 
A Weekly Gaze.

About this week's spotlight: 
Who: A.R. Kane
What: WTSH Shoegaze Spotlight feature
Where: Strangeways Radio blog
When: every week
Every week WTSH will present a shoegaze/dream pop band on Strangeways' blog, highlighting how very awesome the band is and how you should be listening to them and buying their music and supporting them because they deserve it.

This week's focus is a look back at the inventors of dream pop - 
A.R. Kane.
Formed in London in 1986, A.R. Kane was essentially the partnership of Alex Ayuli and Rudi Tambala. Arguably the most criminally under-recognized band of their era and often credited as the creators of dream pop, the British duo A.R. Kane anticipated virtually all of the key musical breakthroughs of the 1990s a decade before the fact, with the roots of everything from shoegazing to trip-hop to ambient dub — even those of post-rock — lying in their dreamy, oceanic sound. Their lyrics, which frequently dealt with such topics as water/oceans, love, colours, childhood, and dreams, were often surrealist. Their music was usually danceable, due in part to its strong dub influence, and ethereal. Ayuli and Tambala were also part of the one-off recording collective M|A|R|R|S, which included the group Colourbox, in 1987. Their song “Pump Up the Volume” became a surprise worldwide number one chart hit.

In 1987, A.R. Kane debuted their first 12 inch single “When You’re Sad” on record label One Little Indian; later in 1987 they moved to 4AD to release the follow-up EP Lollita, an impressively eclectic blend of gorgeous dream pop bliss and nightmarish squalls of feedback produced by the Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie…Click here to read the full article