Guitaro – Futura Black LP (We Made Records)
Originally a CD-R scattered around in tiny numbers during the last decade’s earlier years, Future Black is the ultimate latter-wave shoegaze interpretation and must be heard by more people. We Made Records is a brand new label run by a fellow named Vince who used to do Manifold Records (K.K. Null, Final, D.J. Spooky, etc) in the ‘90s and up through Y2K. Even in this privacy-is-golden era, you try doing all of this out of Memphis, TN, and you’ll staring at the void whether you want to or not. Guitaro is/was essentially a Canadian studio wizard named Mark Weibe and his buddies, and the difference between this and 98% of “Comments Section” Shoegaze is substantial. For one, this doesn’t exist in contrast to logic. New, young bands should not sound identical to Ride, MBV, etc, but they do. New, young bands even sink lower by sounding identical to Spacemen 3 and JAMC, implying a 100% lack of topically adding signature elements within their respective soundspaces. Most are seemingly unaware they are peddling warmed-up leftovers long past the toss-date. Guitaro could have gotten away with this in 2001, but we’re not dealing with idiotic art-college assholes, so there was a natural instinct to be wary of history and shoot for furthering the style rather than picking it clean. The first track sounds like Hidden Hand doing shoegaze with a guest vocalist. Thick, heavy, riff-oriented and pushed by a hooky groove, that one is clearly sequenced first for a reason. So is the first track on side 2 (there is no CD release of this), a mannered take on Slowdive, if Slowdive was ever all it was cracked up to be (it wasn’t). Lots of acoustic-to-noise-and-back-to-acoustic action on here, just like golden-era Boo Radleys. If this doesn’t sell out of its first pressing of 600 (on 180 gr w/ DL card) within a year, I should just give the fuck up. (http://wemaderecords.com)
(Andrew Earles)
