100 Bands in 100 Days Presented by Verity Credit Union — Day 20: somesurprises

Please check out Verity Credit Union, our great partner in the 100 Bands in 100 Days local music showcase.

Music fans of the Pacific Northwest, get ready for our fourth annual year-end daily local music showcase, 100 Bands in 100 Days, where every day until December 31st, we’re showcasing a new band or artist you have to know about, presented by Verity Credit Union. Make sure you are checking the #100Bands100Days hashtag at Twitter on the daily to stay on top of all the bands featured and make sure to follow Verity on Twitter and NW_Music_Scene as well. Some days the featured act could be an established and locally-adored northwest-based musician and other times they could be a band with a small following that just hasn’t had their deserved time in the sun yet. Either way, we’re fairly confident you can come away from this daily segment with plenty of new favorites. Today’s featured artist is somesurprises.

.  

Back in May of this year we reviewed the latest offering, Serious Dream by today’s featured artist, somesurprises.

Here’s some of what we said about the album in the review:

Serious Dreams is ripe with examples of weighted ambience and feather dropping speeds. It’s a slow decent into a Jell-O like fog and color blurred fantasy. “Mayor Skipped Town/SRS DRMS” starts the drifting within a cathedral of sound and weight. Leader Natasha El-Sergany’s vocals drip and swirl into a densely druggy feast. “Late July”sounds like it was birthed inside a skylight cave; bleak and wet, yet warmed by sunbeams streaking within. “All My Failures” sandwiches all slowcore’s dark, delicate steps and shoegaze’s hazy incantations and smears the two into a floating force, rising further and further into the ether. The calming “Low on Sleep” is arguably a beautiful song to, in fact, fall asleep to. Band mate Josh Medina’s repetitive guitar echoes can certainly fill a room and the tone is just about the most bliss enduring sound you can blanket yourself in.

The album ends with the aptly named, “21st Century Cigarette.” This is a deeply meandering piece, flubbing from one wall to the next. The structure is riddled with holes, which works deceptively well; the smoke circulates with a sense of purpose, escaping tightly constrained ideas of what song structures can and can’t be. All the space El-Sergany and Medina create lead to hidden chambers. BE PRESENT. The thick, wet washed brushed strokes, will dry on their own; avoid rushing the drying effect.

Serious Dreams could be a soundtrack for future civilian stratosphere travels considering the endless amount of wandering found from beginning to end. El-Sergany weaves intensely sonic spells through wanderlust and summoned words, while Medina’s dampened guitars are a woozy treat for those traveling on the astral plane. But something about Serious Dreams is so intentionally grounded to the world around us; I think I will prefer it with my feet on the ground.