Lake of Tears - Greater Art - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

East Coast minimal wave institution Xeno & Oaklander's seventh full-length further distills their iconic noir synth pop into a streamlined suite of gleaming, graceful retrofuturism. Inspired by ideas of synesthesia, scent, star worship, and obsolescent technologies, the duo of Liz Wendelbo and Sean McBride began conceiving the blueprint of Vi/deo while sequestered at their Southern Connecticut home studio during the pandemic. The context of isolation, streaming, and remote dreaming seeped into their chemistry, manifesting as both homage to and meditation on a certain cinematic strain of technicolor fantasy the screen as stage, distance disguised as intimacy, where tragedy and glamor crossfade into one.Opening with the precision synthetic melancholy of InchInfinite Sadness,Inch the album marks a peak fluidity between the pair's fusion of analog electronics and poetic melody, both refined and oblique, classic but contemporary. Wendelbo modeled her singing on Incha young boy in a choir,Inch alternately holding notes and whispering them, with the lyrics clear, the voice elevated. McBride's synthesizers serve as the perfect counterpart, tiered and polished, threading fluorescent architectures of a lost audio-visual age. Theirs is a darkwave of reverie and flickering city lights, swooning and sleek, romantic anthems for concrete bohemia, cigarette smoke in rainy gardens, and sound as color (Inchblue is fast and red is slowInch). Vi/deo captures the bittersweet beauty of youth and utopias, the wistful transformation from miracle to memory, where love turns unreal and music becomes myth InchSounds of the underground / Will echo in future days / Feelings of misery / Will fade into the haze.Inch

Ominous was originally released in 2021 and was the return of Swedish Lake of Tears to the scene after few years of silence. The album combines the melancholy well known from the band's early releases with memorable melodies, appealing to both loyal fans and new listeners. InchOminousInch includes beautiful guitar parts, a mesmerizing atmosphere, and emotional, dark melodies. This album is a definite must-have for fans of gothic rock and and also for doom metal maniacs.

Headstones was the successor to the magnificent debut InchGreater ArtInch, released in 1995 and certified that these Swedes are ready for great things. Today, 28 years later, we could say that InchHeadstonesInch is an immortal album, one of the most important not only of Lake of Tears, but in the entire history of Doom Metal. Even though it's main body synthetically moves in doom paths carved by InchGreater ArtInch, InchHeadstonesInch has many more innovative features to the point that we would do their music an injustice by trying to categorize it under labels. Here in time is perhaps the pivotal point where the first nuggets of the sound that would follow in the next albums are recognized. Heavy & upbeat riffs alternate with acoustic melodies, pompous drums & passionate vocals, overwhelm the 9 tracks that exist in InchHeadstonesInch.