Eyes Like Brontide

Lights Out Asia | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (July 19, 2008)
• Original Release Date: 2008
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: N5md
• ASIN: B001BN1V08
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #173,983 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Lights Out Asia mixes electronica and shoegazer moods on their third album, Eyes Like Brontide. Brontide is the vibration from an earth tremor and Lights Out Asia send shudders both heroic and foreboding. The foreboding aspect you get from titles like "Radars Over the Ghosts of Chernobyl." The heroic part comes from the arc of that composition. It starts with Gothic chords and Latin voices that sound like an oblivion mass before slowly emerging into surging guitars, hell bound rhythms and Chris Schafer's anguished vocal. Despite some nice vocal touches by Schafer, who usually buries his voice in the mix, Lights Out Asia is predominantly instrumental. More often they rely on audio verité like the police scanner recordings that open "The Wrong Message Could End You." Like most of the songs on Eyes Like Brontide, it's composed on an epic scale, shifting through movements that take you from minor key moods to major key crescendos. Even at their darkest, Lights Out Asia usually emerge with something more affirming. You can hear echoes of The Cocteau Twins in songs like "MIR" and "Psiu! Puxa!" with their insistent rhythms and jangling guitars drenched in reverb and surrounded by swirling synthesizers. Lights Out Asia is making music that makes the end of the world seem like a good thing. -- John Diliberto

Product Description

Once a band has developed a sound that is undeniably theirs it can be difficult to push beyond those confines and expand the sound into new territory. Lights Out Asia set out to do just that and have succeeded in writing a record that was as much a sign of the times as it was an expansion of their aural bubble that has been their watermark. They have been called ethereal, post-shoegaze and sleep-rock, but on their third full length "Eyes Like Brontide" the band slides into a darker more ominous and less lucid dream than on previous efforts. The release is a stylistic shift from the sweet lullabies of their debut "Garmonia" (Sun Sea Sky) and the electronic drum driven post-shoegaze of 2007's "Tanks and Recognizers" (n5MD). The song dynamics on the album deserve special attention. For the first time in Lights Out Asia's history they have gone for broke with some of the most epic drum machine driven post-rock this side of the Pacific along with solemn disconnected passages of dream nourished sonics. The occasional floating vocal and dusty winding guitar they are known for are still present, but "Eyes Like Brontide" brings a whole new dimension to the Lights Out Asia ethos. Most importantly, the band has expanded upon its sound without throwing away the original blueprint or alienating it's fanbase. "Eyes Like Brontide" is recommended for fans of Hammock, Bitcrush, Robin Guthrie and Manual.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lush and evocative, even for electronic/rock label... Just gorgeous, February 4, 2009

By 

Shayna Miller (Toronto, ON) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eyes Like Brontide (Audio CD)

So I purchased this CD based on a recommendation from Amazon. I really had no clue if it would live up to the few seconds of clip I heard as the sample tracks, and it did much more then that! I was blown away by this trio; well done musical landscape. I spend (too) much time looking for ambient/new age/electronic music that inspires me, and I'm often let down a bit with only a few good tracks. Well I'm hooked on the entire CD, and Lights out Asia and can't wait to purchase their other CD's. My best description is an odd compromise between Chicane/Amethystium/David Sylvan (all which are nothing like each other!) That is how original they are to me.
Love this CD...

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Headphone Commute Review, August 19, 2009

By 

Headphone Commute - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eyes Like Brontide (Audio CD)

If it looks like I am desperately trying to catch up on some amazing albums, and tell you about them since they first came out, it's because I am. There is just way too much music for me to go through these days. And let's face it, complaining about too much good music is a sin. Yet the fact that I have already listed Eyes Like Brontide on my Best of 2008 List last year should tell you something about my excitement for Lights Out Asia. Never mind the lack of time on my part to give it a thorough review. So I give you no apologies. But I give you these words. The third full length album by the Wisconsin based band opens up with atmospheric swells and echoes of commentary on music, until the drum machine patterns merge into acoustic percussion along the shoegazing, reverb drenched guitars and then... and then we are in the familiar territory of Lights Out Asia's staple sound, with epic harmony and Chris Schafer's desperate vocals. What continues to impress me throughout the works by LOA is the group's ability to effortlessly maneuver their song structures and production between acoustic and electronic, no doubt only belonging to one of my favorite labels, n5MD. I first came upon Lights Out Asia when they released their sophomore album, Tanks and Recognizers (n5MD, 2008). Since then I've been a follower and a fan. The formula behind their work seems simple, yet the emotion evoking execution is flawless. The sound of LOA falls between lush post-rock, organic ambient, crunchy IDM and ethereal cinematic soundscapes. If just that description gets you drooling, then of course, this album is for you, synthetic strings and all... To hear where it all started, pick up the group's debut album, Garmonia (Sun Sea Sky Productions, 2003). Lights Out Asia even made it on Tympanik's compilation, Emerging Organisms Vol.2, as well as ??record Compilation (Zankyo, 2008) [yes, those are Japanese characters in the album title you're seeing], where they shared the spot among Manual, 65daysofstatic, Bitcrush, Helios, I'm Not A Gun, Do Make Say Think, and many others. This album is seriously recommended for the above mentioned artist names, as well as Hammock, Port-Royal, July Skies, and Jatun. Pick up your copy directly from n5MD's mailorder.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent!, July 29, 2009

By 

Aaron Smith - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eyes Like Brontide (MP3 Download)

This album is awesome! I was only going to buy MIR, but since the other two reviews rated it so well I decided to just get the whole thing. I'm VERY glad I did!!!