#Brave little abacus bandcamp professional#
The music isn’t intended to replicate the sound of four people who pooled their money to rent a studio and hire a professional mixer. In every single note, there’s a reminder of what this album actually captures: the point where inspiration meets limitation. The drums are redlined to near-constant digital clipping and are as textural as they are rhythmic.Īudiophiles will go insane pointing out what Parannoul gets wrong and any attempt to remix or remaster To See the Next Part of the Dream would negate its entire emotional thrust. “Beautiful World” and “Youth Rebellion” are fascinating transmissions from shoegaze’s Uncanny Valley, its fuzz tones all neon glow and pixelated grit, erasing any remnant of fingers meeting steel. It really does sound like someone routing their guitar directly into their computer to avoid waking up their parents. To See the Next Part of the Dream is its inverse: all of its acoustic instruments could pass for tones triggered by MIDI pads or synth keys. Their formative years include M83’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, which emerged as the 21st century’s first truly innovative shoegaze album by exclusively using synthesizers to replicate their analog analogues. Your favorite shoegaze album of the past couple of years might have come from a band who openly admits to using off-the-rack guitars and DAW presets to create sounds bigger, bolder, and brighter than anything a major label could’ve financed even ten years ago.īut that’s not what Parannoul does. covers “ Vapour Trail”! Ulrich Schnauss joins American Football! What if Phil Elverum started the Microphones as a Smashing Pumpkins tribute act? Parannoul’s Bandcamp recommendations respectively tout Brave Little Abacus, Weatherday, and Car Seat Headrest for their “inspiration, production and passion.” But for all of its decades-old influences, To See the Next Part of the Dream takes an inherently modernist approach to shoegaze, reliant on advances in home-recording technology that have eliminated barriers to entry in a genre long obsessed with straight-to-tape purity, bespoke pedals, and an album that infamously bankrupted its record label. Parannoul sees themselves as a fan more than a musician, and the clarity of their reference points inspires awe-inducing dream dates: The Radio Dept. The low-end is imperceptible and though they sing brutally despondent lyrics in Korean, the vocals are mixed low enough to function as texture for listeners assuming the usual sweet nothings of shoegaze. The guitars are almost always either coppery acoustics or saturated fuzz, with nothing in between. Like many shut-ins who’ve internalized the shame in their singing voice or instrumental prowess, Parannoul primarily works in shoegaze and bedroom-pop. To See the Next Part of the Dream is littered with time-stamped references like Welcome the NHK!, Goodnight Punpun and, more disturbingly, All About Lily Chou Chou, a pitch-black cult favorite that layered gauzy cinematography atop a brutal story of high school kids committing unspeakable acts of bullying. In the music, there is no happiness to be found in the present or the future, only bittersweet memories of youth wasted on the young and the good times that never were-specifically, the early 2000s. To See the Next Part of the Dream is not an antidote to its creator’s paralyzing misery, but a monument that honors its enormity-“I wish no one had seen my miserable self/I wish no one had seen my numerous failures/I wish my young and stupid days to disappear forever,” they sing on the opening “Beautiful World.” If that feeling scans as melodramatic, To See the Next Part of the Dream ensures it’s every bit as overwhelming as they say it is. Despite the internet’s endless possibilities for personal reinvention, Parannoul is an alias, not an alter ego. The only subjective fact: they’re a student writing music in a Seoul bedroom.
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