Sooj - Crusher - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

As crushed, musicians Bre Morell and Shaun Durkan make maximalist dream pop music for themselves. Recording out of various homes, not fixed to any single location (Morell from Texas, now based in Los Angeles, and Durkan in Portland, Oregon), they write the songs they want to hear, tuning from shared taste for trip-hop, Britpop, electronica, and the canon of '90s alt radio, a desire for emotionality, and an instinct for when it sounds right and honest; when it means something real to them. Their full-length debut, no scope, embodies their trust in one another and in their craft. A Inchno scopeInch kill in the video game lexicon is achieved by shooting a sniper rifle at close range without scoping in on your target, an apt metaphor for two artists following their pop impulses, shooting from the hip with precision. InchIt might also mean like, having no future,Inch jokes Morell, Inchgetting no-scoped by life.Inch The reality of failure looms in most creative pursuits, perhaps more pronounced the further into your field you get. Several musical lives and midnight transmissions have led Morell and Durkan to this project. And on the triumphant no scope, crushed take life's best shots with their strongest work, wielding melodic, open-hearted hooks through a maze of breakbeats and spliced sound design with unprecedented immediacy and clarity. Next level, unlocked.no scope follows extra life, the 2023 EP and debut collaboration between Morell, who also fronts the band Temple of Angels (Run For Cover Records), and Durkan, who has produced for others (Topographies, Young Prisms) following the 2010s run of his former band Weekend (Slumberland Records). Their first batch of songs together saw a groundswell of support, finding early fans in Pitchfork, NPR, and Ghostly International, who signed the band and gave extra life a wider physical in 2024. Crushed capped the year with the

Highspire - Crushed [COMPACT DISCS] date 07/11/2025

Lovesliescrushing exists between the worlds of shoegazer and ambience, the ascendant former has once again conceded to the latter. This is pure glitch-bliss.On their 4th album from 2002, Lovesliescrushing ventured further from the traditional rock elements which characterized prior dream pop bands. Guitarist Scott Cortez and vocalist Melissa Arpin distanced themselves from the genre by rejecting conventional song structures in favor of an intensified drifting sound. In Lovesliescrushing the sound forcefully inaugurated by My Bloody Valentine's classic Loveless gradually approached pure ambience. Nevertheless, their typically warm guitars counterveil the minimal or entirely absent percussion and verse/chorus . Wordless female vocals drift in and out while 'electronic beats' - guitarnoise softened by semi-lo-fi production - occasionally interrupt a wash of guitar; ranging from the rich vibrant tone of the opening track InchglixenInch to the subdued quasi-detached feel of the closer Inchvihygen.InchVoirshn is a synthesis of processed ambient gloss and lo-fi grit, creating a digital-analog hybrid that Scott terms 'glitch-bliss.' Songs were compiled from a palette of sonorities extrapolated from a collection of voice and guitars, warped into rumbling subsonics, staticblast hiss, hazy chord clusters, extended infinite tone loops, melody spirals, avian-like whistles, glistening overtones, voices cut-up into splintered fragments, thoughtforms suspended over warm tonesheets like a ghost cloud, indistinct and luminous. Still eschewing bass and drums, rhythmic elements are culled from filtered guitar tones mutated into stroboscopic pulsations and digital dust clickings. Once again guitardamage is wrought upon six-strings, manipulated, deconstructed, reassembled to create bloodrush pulses reminiscent of a softly humming embryonic landscape of digitized lullabies.2021 CD reissue