We have a stream of new releases to feature this week, but we'll start the week with a band from Sweden who made their debut a couple of years back, but after a break of a couple of years, have returned with a new vigour and a new sound too. 'Dreaming of the Pyramids' are a 4 piece band from Karlskrona, a naval city in the south of Sweden, and they were formed with members who had previously played in 2 bands, 'Parlour' and 'Blitz united' - I think I found a trace of the latter on YouTube, and they were pretty good too.
Anyway the new sound that I referenced comes from a switch from the synthesizer based earlier tracks to an approach that now utilises synths and guitars. And that's definitely the right way to go. They've released 2 tracks as a 'Double-A' side, 'The Rain' and the excellent 'The Sun Still Shines For You', and their new music has a dreamy shoegaze influenced sound, which works well for me given my college diet of music consisted pretty much exclusively of the likes of Slowdive, Ride, Lush, Chapterhouse (and Cardiacs obviously, but they weren't shoegaze..).
So the song which undoubtedly works best is 'the Sun Still Shines for You', and the reason for that is it just has such a darn good melody, which in the early beginning has a Lightening Seeds feel to it (maybe), but then opens up after 2 minutes with a full sound band that gives the music a real intensity too. The track slowly builds over the full 7 minutes, with a long swirling almost blissful instrumental section and a guitar solo blasting out the main musical theme, and I really like that crescendo in sound, and that climax before it softens at the end.
This is 'The Sun Still Shines for You':
It's early days writing music around more guitar based influences, but 'Dreaming of the Pyramids' clearly have the ability to write good tunes and maintain a rich intensity in sound. And whilst the combination of synths / guitars works well, I hope they also aren't afraid to really ramp up the guitars when they need to - because it's those contrasts in their music that I think are most effective. Or am I inadvertently trying to turn them into a post rock band? Anyway we look forward to further releases with interest, and you can follow them on their new Facebook page.