Flyying Colours – ROYGBIV EP

Flyying Colours – ROYGBIV EP

flyyingcolours_roygbiv

Flyying Colours – ROYGBIV EP

Melbourne based shoegaze outfit Flyying Colours released their second EP ROYGBIV on the 12th of May this year with Club AC30. Melbourne seems to be a hotbed for the current  shoegaze/ psych. The city is the cradle of bands like Blush Response, Contrast, Kigo, Lowtide and Fait, just to name a few.  Recent  Shoegaze festival “Roogaze “was a clear showcase for the gems that have been extracted from the Australian mines.

Flyying Colours have a bit of a reputation of being the crème de la crème of the Aussie wave: their live performance is reputedly outstanding and their song material doesn’t seem to be lacking in any quality either.  Their stuff will please old gazers and young indie-heads alike, but especially the Ride fans amongst the gazing family. Ride were amongst the more poppy bands of the 90’s Shoegaze scene  in regards to being the ones with some proper pop song structures and audible vocals as opposed to the more ethereal soundscapes . But on top of being poppy Shoegaze , Flyying Colours are “pretty much sounding like everything  90’s” ( quote Brodie J. Brummel )  which, I think, describes their music quite accurately. Their sound encompasses the entire spectrum of early 90’s alternative bands, so ROYGBIV  ( Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet)  is an excellent title for this EP that houses that early 90’s zeitgeist in all its facets and hues.

In the opening track – “ I don’t want to let you down” – classic MBV warps slowly surface from nowhere,  gradually morphing  into echoey guitar radials accompanied by contrasting stoic vocals that culminate in a wall of distortion and a staccato, emphatic chorus that sounds almost like a vow or a mantra..

Running Late” is a typical catchy 90’s jangly indie tune with the vocals of Brodie, J. Brummer and Emma O’Connor teaming up in this catchy tale of someone who is always late but, given the laidback tone of the song, seems to have resigned to it.

Not Today” is one the highlights on this EP: it’s up-tempo power and drive makes it, what I call,  a “Road-Movie Shoegaze “ track a la Swervedriver, including a wash of guitars, a pounding bass, charging drums and cooing vocals. Emma O’Connor’s timbre here sounds eerily like Miki Berenyi’s (Lush).  (Emma, Mikki ? get it?)

 “In the End” is a dynamic but dreamy love song : a Stereolab-esque drone with a Sundays swirl on top . The vocals have that typical Shields/ Butcher boy/girl dynamics going on : Emma’s vocals are synchronized with Brodie’s at first and then gradually detach themselves to angelically hover above Brodie’s  languid ones in a sugary sweet  chorus.

Leaks” surprisingly sounds like a tribute to Madchester/ Baggy with ample wah-wah’s  and nudges to The Telescopes and the Ocean Colour Scene.

All in all,  there’s enough here to please everybody! Well, almost everybody…. provided you are interested in early 90’s indie that is J

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