Cascade - Hourglass

Cascade are a recently formed indie-rock-shoegaze band from Dublin. They write songs which fuse shoegaze dreaminess into accessible indie-rock. Although yet to hit the live circuit, they have put together a 3-track EP, titled 'Hourglass', recorded late last year. I've been giving it a listen recently.

There's a strong influence of Ian Brown to be heard here, but with some occasional swathes of light guitar fuzz over the background, comparisons with early Verve material are well fitting too. A few easy comparisons so, but there's more behind Cascade than just replicating what has gone before.

Cascade guitarist Mick Farren explains how some of the band's influences have shaped their sound, how the EP has come about, and how a quite positive response has now helped motivate them on -

"It's exactly what we're trying to do with Cascade. We want to take the dreamy ambience/noise of the whole shoegazing sound, particularly Loveless, an album I'll never tire of... and combine it with melodies that could be played on an acoustic guitar without sounding utterly shite. We also like electronic stuff such as Aphex Twin and Biosphere; we use samplers and field recorded stuff in our tunes too."

"The songs on the Hourglass EP were recorded in late 2006 in my project studio, at the time there were only 2 of us - Dave Greene did the singing, I did everything else. We put them online as a sort of litmus test, to our surprise, we got mostly positive response, which was great. So we've recruited a couple more musicians to fill out the sound, and we've a lot more stuff on the way. We aim to play live in a few months when we've got a good selection of songs to pick from."

I'm interested in hearing what happens next with Cascade. I’d like to see them deliver more on their intent of fusing in a shoegaze sound into what they are doing, to distance themselves from direct comparisons with their indie-rock influences. As the band have filled out their sound considerably since the recording of that EP, perhaps we will see this happen, with a live set and subsequent material a little less light weight than the material on Hourglass, and I'm anticipating something more unique will then emerge in Cascade.

Related Links:

http://www.myspace.com/cascadesounds