goral dreens - pink stain

Released: July 30

Pink Stain, the latest short album from goral dreens, is ostensibly a lurid experiment to see what happens when shoegaze meets harsh noise. And to that end, it explores this combination quite well. But it comes out to be a bit more than that, especially in some of the later tracks. But to open up, we start with “Home song,” a noisy track that features a lot of cymbal work. This stands out to me a bit as I have found it rare that a harsh noise album of sorts makes such extensive use of the accents of a drum kit. They come through roughly too, giving the vibe that they just had to squeeze themselves through a trash compactor and in-sink garbage disposal just to make it to the listener’s ears while indiscernible static carries on in the background. 

As we come to the second track, this is where some of that shoegaze influence really starts to creep in. In “thekidnhiscorpse” we hear the first bits of identifiable guitar, wailing errantly in the background under a layer of noisy distorted percussion and an otherwise sparse background. It’s noisy, but also keeps a rather low profile especially towards the end as it morphs into a noise inflected shoegaze soundscape rather than a noise track with some fuzzy guitar. “music1” dives fully into the realm of drone with no percussion and swirling noisy tones that give the impression of an impending crescendo that never comes. The final track of the album feels like it really perfects the concept behind the album, shifting and morphing over twelve minutes that sees it move from distorted drones, to something you may hear from your local neighborhood garage band, and finally into giant wash of white noise and distortion that overtakes everything else. 

The idea of melding shoegaze and noise togehher is an intriguing one. The execution of this idea is pretty successful as well, with only a few brief moments seemingly losing one of the combinatory elements in the clutter of sound. But for those moments in which one is lost, there are many more moments in which the elements blend perfectly to make something that soothes and grates at the same time.