All Sides
All Sides
Genres: ambient, drone, shoegaze, post-rock, drone ambient
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Troum & All Sides
About All Sides
Following two EPs on Make Mine Music and Chat Blanc Records, and Shutûn, a collaborative album with Troum on Old Europa Café, “Dedalus” is the first full-length album from Nina Kernicke aka All Sides. Drawing influence from the likes of Slowdive, Radiohead, Scorn, Meat Beat Manifesto and Mark Hollis, to name but a few, Nina's music has been greeted with praise from many quarters, including Boomkat who noted that the music of All Sides successfully merged many styles into a “euphoric” blend. “Dedalus” is partly an expression and reflection of Nina's personal experiences, but it was also inspired by recording the album “Shutun” and touring Poland, Finland, Canada and USA with Troum, an experimental, drone outfit based in Nina's hometown of Bremen, Germany. The album's title is, in part, a reference to the character Stephen Dedalus in the James Joyce 's classic novel Ulysses . The title track gives a clearer indication about the context, in its use of a sample from a cinematic version of the novel, in which Dedalus walks along a beach, looking out to sea, becoming aware of his loneliness. Simultaneously, the title refers to the character from Greek mythology whose son Icarus dies during their escape from Crete - Dedalus and Icarus build wings out of feathers and wax and, in spite of warnings, Icarus flies too high and too close to the sun, melting the wax and plunging him into the sea. References to both of these can be found throughout the album, but they are as much metaphors for Nina's personal experiences as they are literary references. The eleven tracks on the album are reflections on - and attempts to come to terms with - dreams, doubts, loneliness, suicide, the need to escape from both the world and the self, and the knowledge that one should not abandon hope nor lose sight of the beauty of the world. Where there is darkness, there is also light. Musically, you can find dark loops and drifting beats accompanied by deep basslines and distorted drones and melodies. The origin of some of the sounds is hard to pinpoint – “Luv” and “Into the Sea”, for example, are created solely from guitar and vocals. Elsewhere, you will find pitched down triphop beats, strange time signatures and reverb-drenched “wall of sound” guitars. “Dedalus” is a perfect distillation of its inspirations – it is an album of stark contrasts, from dark melancholy to shimmering hope.
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