Moonshake

Moonshake, named after a Can song that, likewise, has its name borrowed from a japanese novel, is one of the most interesting assembles I've came across lately. They were born circa late 80's doing an abrasive Noise Pop-meets-Shoegaze  (Guy Fixsen, one of the hundreths of Loveless engineers, was a sort of "secret member" of Moonshake in its earliest apparitions), but they got into other musical directions after that. Very crazy and challenging ones, actually, ranging from Trip Hop, Industrial and  Electronica to Post Punk and even Jazz, going more and more experimental and unpredictable in its late phase, until its definitive demise around 1997. 

But let's stick to their sort-of most popular effort, the 1992's Eva Luna. Shoegaze fans will be immediately intimidated by the surprisingly high and inteligible vocals, cortesy of Dave Callahan, but they'll readily recognize the love for fuzz and feedback that make their joy, besides finding some comfort with the bittersweet whispered vocals of Margaret Fielder. Howerver, this 13-piece album is far more exotic and eccletic than most bands defined like that. Twisted surrealistic lyrics, unusual time signatures and drum patterns, horns, dubby and jazzy rythms, dreamlike soundscapes that no seldom goes plain gloomy and abrasive.

Although they were highly talented and were succesful in accomplish such ambitious work, it's not hard to figure out they didn't find much audience and was largely overlooked by the Grunge assault and even the more orthodox Shoegaze acts that were bubbling everywhere in the planet by that time. After Eva Luna, Fielder left the band and started Laika, a Trip Hop effort created with Fixsen, and now take part as guitarist of the band Wire (PJ Harvey, Kathering Gifford and Mary Hansen made vocal appearances after Fielder departure), while Moonshake got even crazier, making more electronic-based sounds (as the 93's Big Good Angel) and more Jazzy, Trip hop-ish sounds at the '96 Dirty And Divine, their ultimate album. Unfortunately, none of them earned the recognizement they deserved, receiving only a small cult following lately, with the advent of web and such, still insufficient for everything they did back then. That's why I drop a download link for Eva Luna right below, for now, and will upload their other crafts in the near future. 

enjoy!