Shit's Awes0me: Ceremony

A couple of years after the wave of shoegaze violence in the late 80's, early 90's Skywave was formed. Active from somewhere in the mid 90's to 2004, they released 3 albums and a couple of EP's, all pretty lo-fi The Jesus and Mary Chain'ish noisy shoegaze. After their demise in 2004 Paul Baker and John Fedowitz formed Ceremony, basically a continuation of Skywave, minus Oliver Ackermann, who is now playing in A Place To Bury Strangers and was replaced by a drumming machine.

Personally I never really got into those Skywave songs, a bit too lo-fi, not the hazy melodies My Bloody Valentine has or the beautiful sweetness of Slowdive. Ceremony is a whole other story, their songwriting approach is a bit more noisepop instead of the echoing post-punk on the Skywave records. Something Skywave never had, but Ceremony's records are full of, is catchyness. Probably one of the main reasons why they got signed to Brainwashed Recordings (home of Soundpool, Jessica Bailiff, Thisquietarmy and industrial lengends Coil). To give you a little impression of how Ceremony sounds nowadays, my personal favourite of their 2010 album Rocket Fire.




Before Rocket Fire they settled for one cd-r called Disappear at one of my favourite record labels; Safranin Sound (Screen Vinyl Image, Safeashome, The Vera Violets). Unfortunately Safranin Sound seems to be inactive for almost a year now so it might be a bit hard to lay hour hands on this shiny piece of recordable, yet affordable polycarbonate plastic. The upcoming weeks they are touring Europe (especially Germany) together with The Lost Rivers, come and see them if you happen to live nearby, and please, bring some earprotection. If you're still not convinced of the inarguable awesomeness of this band, this is Call My Name from their Safranin debut. The quality is low for some reason, it must be the LOUDNESS. Earpiercing in this case also means speakerpiercing.




Spread the love and the inarguable loud awesomeness of Ceremony,

Selwin.