Review: Ringo Deathstarr - Colour Trip

Artist: Ringo Deathstarr
Title: Colour Trip
Format: Full-length
Year: 2011
Label: Club AC30
Genre: Shoegaze / Noise Pop
Rating: 92 / 100

Unfortunately, the shoegaze movement isn't as alive anymore as it was in the mid-80's. Some bands, like Asobi Seksu, Raveonettes and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart still make music which is of course clearly inspired by the bands that made this genre so famous, but keeping this very modern, sometimes even quite poppy element in their music. Besides this so called nugaze movement there is Ringo Deathstarr, a Texas based shoegaze band which grabs back those elements that made bands like My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus & Mary Chain so unique. Fuzzy, reverb drenched guitars, saturated vocals, mixed to the background, together creating an enormous wall of hazy melodies, a droning noise of pure sweetness.

Back in 2007 they released their very first self-titled EP, which was my personal introduction to their music; a very traditional style of shoegaze. It was one of those rare pieces of music which perfectly balance noise and melody. A couple of singles and EP's followed, eventually resulting in this Colour Trip, their first real album (assuming Sparkler was more a kind of compilation of earlier released tracks). The biggest piece of criticism Ringo Deathstarr had to endure in their early days was their undeniable similarity with both My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus & Mary Chain. It's something that hasn't changed by the release of Colour Trip, I am absolutely not going to deny those similarities. Still, releases like these are extremely rare nowadays, and it's a type of music which has brought forth a relatively small amount of really good albums. I am convinced Colour Trip could with ease be added to that small list of amazing shoegaze albums produced since the early 80's. It might not become as classic as Loveless, but qualitatively it's, in my humble opinion at least, pretty much on the same level.

But what is it that makes Ringo Deathstarr so awes0me? It's actually something I already mentioned in the previous paragraph; it's their ability to perfectly balance noise and lovely melodies. This balance is what makes shoegaze so attractive, and it's a balance Ringo Deathstarr is able to keep, with ease. It's the result of a noisy underlayer of a guitar/bass unity, literally drenched in tremolo, delay, reverb and fuzz, lots of fuzz, but on top the soft male/female vocals, often reminding me of Slowdive, or more topical; The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart.

I could go on about the amazingness of the sound for a couple of hours but I think fery few people are interested in hearing the sexual arousement one could experience from a track like Kaleidoscope or Two Girls. In other words; yes, I could find a tiny little flaw on this album, it's not something which is the bands' fault, unless they've produced it theirselves, but I suspect there is a producer responsible for this. It's part of what's called the Loudness War, producers tend to compress the music as much as they can to make it as loud as possible but at the same time pulling all the punch and clarity out of the music. In the case of shoegaze, this normally isn´t such a problem, but I noticed the guitar sound being sucked away by the drums in some songs, which obviously is due to overcompression. These extreme forms of dynamic compression are a pity, especially when they decrease the overall sound quality of an album, still, Colour Trip is one of my favourite albums of 2011 yet, and some productions flaws won't make it any less enjoyable.

Please spread some love, I tend to fail at this activity,

Selwin.