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//orangenoise

Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan | SELF

Karachi, Sindh, Pakistan | SELF
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"Making Noise With //orangenoise"

Making Noise With //orangenoise
Filed under: Bands, Music, Psychedelic, Shoegaze by airatlanticunderground — Leave a comment
March 14, 2011

//orangenoise plays live in Karachi, Pakistan

“Orange noise”

“Orange noise is quasi-stationary noise with a finite power spectrum with a finite number of small bands of zero energy dispersed throughout a continuous spectrum. These bands of zero energy are centered about the frequencies of musical notes in whatever scale is of interest. Since all in-tune musical notes are eliminated, the remaining spectrum could be said to consist of sour, citrus, or “orange” notes.[12]“ [Wikipedia]

Hmm…. I like orange. I like citrus. I like to listen to the noise between the notes. Maybe that’s why I like //orangenoise. It shimmers, it shines, it rocks and it’s undefined.

Like their namesake, //orangenoise does not completely cling to any one genre or sound of music. That’s probably due to the various influences that each member of the band brings with them which has them continually wading between sounds that could at any given time be defined anywhere between Psychedelic to Shoegaze to Blues to Hard Rock. It’s not so much that they try to be any of these. They just share with each other what comes to them and allow the music to take them where it may, or creating what they call //orangenoise.

The members of //orangenoise are Talha Asim Wynne on guitar and vocals, Faizan Reidinger on guitar, Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey on bass and vocals and Danial Hyatt on percussion.

Talha had already made a name for himself amongst a small niche of Shoegazers across the webb with his solo work. Also, he and Daniel Panjwaneey had become favorites amongst the Indus Valley School of Art scene in Karachi, Pakistan which Talha had been attending at the time. They played together in a band called Look Busy Do Nothing.

Faizan and Danial (Hyatt) were part of another accomplished area band called Mole. After playing a Radiohead tribute show, a few of them moved their own private little gig to one of their homes where a jam session got underway. On several other occasions, Daniel Panjwaneey joined Mole to play bass for a few of their shows. But it wasn’t until the four found themselves jamming on the rooftops of Karachi that they decided that they should do something about all of this //orangenoise and get down to some serious business.

As it was, //orangenoise, stemming from a series of jam sessions between friends, originally started out as a collective. Once the ball got rolling and they refined their sound, they settled on the four members and got themselves some bookings. Their first show was in July of 2010 and was held at a very popular venue in Karachi, the Pakistan American Cultural Center. This was an exciting offer for the band because the majority of the bands play in small cafes across Karachi which are now popping up everywhere. About 80% of the local bands play covers of mostly Classic Rock such as Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd songs but there are some originals in the mix. //orangenoise is one of those originals who write and play their own music. - Air Atlantic Underground Radio


"Karachi’s //orangenoise Brings Shoegaze to Pakistan"

The alternative rock style known as shoegaze was named for lead guitarists who stood on stage in front of a crowd and stared directly down at their feet, sometimes noodling with effects pedals, sometimes just gazing downward mesmerized by their own wall of noise. The sound is big, the distortion is thick, and the lyrics are almost never discernible. It’s a sound that emerged in the UK in the early 90s, went away when grunge got big, and came back this past decade. This time around, Pakistan is making a contribution to the genre.

Karachi’s //orangenoise create dreamy, disjointed melodies and never go light on the reverb. Their songs go from ambient to thrashy and back again with the drums turned down and the guitar at center stage. At times, all you can hear are the residuals of a single chord. The production is true to the original incarnation of this sound. //orangenoise is more than just the only band in the region playing this style. They understand the nuances of how to make this stuff really well, and their music rivals the contemporary bands leading the revamped nu-gaze scene today.

Remember Karachi post-rock band 6LA8? I’d love to see these two bands share a bill in the near future. Rock show in Karachi!

Their debut EP just dropped a couple of days ago and can be downloaded for free here.

- MTV


"Your New Favorite Band: //orangenoise"

You went to South By Southwest? Excellent, you feel like you know about all the new bands? You got a chance to see all those wonderful bands we’ve been touting for the past year? Feeling comfortable? Perfect. Let’s get you started on a brand new batch of bands that will surely be the talk of South By Southwest 2012. Today we travel to Pakistan to bring you the best new band of 2011, //orangenoise. Because we’re American, we’re elitist and ignorant, which means we had no idea there was a shoegaze scene in Pakistan. //orangenoise have an innate sense of melody that is cleverly masked by their wall of turgid noise. We talked to the guys about music, but felt compelled to ask about the environment that has inspired to create their beautiful destruction. Todd saved this one for himself, so he could share it with you.
You can download their EP for free at Bandcamp.

Rabblerouser by orangenoisepk

TDOA: Let’s start by talking about the music. Tell us about the bands that influenced your sound.

Talha: The Brian Jonestown Massacre, A Place to Bury Strangers, The Verve, Pink Floyd, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and other post-rock, 60s Psychedelia, shoegaze … I’m actually a sucker for any form of experimental approaches to music, i guess Frank Zappa, John Coltrane, Thursten Moore, Ira Kaplan (Yo La Tengo) and the sort have really been an influence on where the approach to making sounds is concerned.

Danny P: The one band that got me interested in playing music was Tool followed by The Smashing Pumpkins which totally changed my perception of what things could sound like. Over the years artists such as Porcupine Tree, Meshuggah, Tori Amos, My Bloody Valentine, Oceansize to name a few have influenced me in some way or the other.

TDOA: How long has the band been together and how did you guys meet?

Talha: It’s gonna be a year in July together as a ‘band’, me and Danny P (Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey) used to play earlier in another band we had a lotta mutual friends between us. In march last year, we met up with the guys from Mole (another awesome band from Karachi) which Danial and Faizan are part of, they hooked up with us for a few jams and we ended up making some noise.

TDOA: Can you talk about the lyrical message of your music?

Danny P: There’s no perfect explanation for the lyrical content or message, if a listener can make sense of any of it its totally up to them to decide what it means to them, kinda like choosing your own adventure. However, personally I seem to put down experiences or even random thoughts when I write and by random that means it can range anywhere from a rant to a logical or absolutely nonsensical thought.

Talha: I tend to write about small things, everyday life and thoughts, but as you may have heard on the album, the words really aren’t that important as much as the entire sound of a track. I guess we’re trying to make a relation with the listener where there is no sense of alienation instead a familiar feeling you can grip on to.

TDOA: I’m sure you understand that a lot of people will be surprised to hear that you are from Pakistan, since we don’t hear much about bands from your part of the workd. What is the music scene in Pakistan like? Are there other bands like you there?

Danny P: It’s interesting and its also divided, theres the mainstream scene where the majority of it consists of pop stars, culturally the folk scene is strong and then theres also the underground which consists mainly of cover bands, rock and metal acts, then theres this wave of bands and artists coming up that experiment with their sounds, this can vary from electronic, ambient, post-rock, psychedelic and progressive music.

Talha: There’s a lotta mad talent hidden in parts of Pakistan, we’ve got people making independent music, artists like Mole, Bashir and the Pied Pipers, 6LA8 & Asfandyar Khan are part of this new wave of experimental music coming out of Pakistan, their sounds tend to go from electronic to drum n bass to post rockish soundscapes. Metal and cover bands have a huge following here in Pakistan, but that’s one thing this new wave of artists are trying to break; the ‘cover band’ mentality. There has also been an up-rise in the number of DJs popping up, fueling the house/dance scene. And of course there is the commercial music scene which is not worth mentioning here.

TDOA: Can you talk about the type of equipment you use? Guitars, amps, pedals…..

Talha: I use a Yamaha RGX420s and a cheap strat copy which i run into a Line6 Spider III combo amp. I use the onboard effects and try to make the most of them. I sometimes route my guitar through my laptop too. I’ve been designing a pedal board in my head, no idea when it’ll be on the floor though!

Danny P: I use an Ibanez Ergodyne 905 5-string bass, a Korg Ampworks Bass processor, a Hartke and Yamaha bass amp and a lot of my new setup depends on routing my bass through an Alesis audio interface hooked up to my laptop which I use for other effects.

TDOA: We found you thanks to your use of social media. Can you give us your thought on Twitter, Facebook and how the internet can be used by a band like yourselves.

Talha: The internet is where the people are. I don’t think our album would’ve reached anywhere without the internet. Sites like Bandcamp and stuff have really made it easy for musicians to maintain an online portfolio of their tracks. Twitter and Facebook have changed the way and the rate at which information is shared, most of our band promotion has been online. From one person to another, once its out there it’s going places and beyond. What more could a band need? I still haven’t burned a physical copy of the album.

Danny P: Its brilliant! if we could use it, anyone can, theres nothing to learn, its simple and most importantly it gets your music out to almost every corner of the world.

TDOA: Great name. What do the “//” marks signify?

Talha: That’s a typographic quirk i worked up for the band name. It works in a few ways, firstly as a quick filtering thingy, because thats how i tag my important stuff on the computer. Secondly it maintains the legit-ness on any band activity on the internet, kind of like a trademark since the internet is cluttered with so much stuff nowadays. You know its the real deal if it has the “//” before orangenoise. And its also cool how it breaks a dimension if you type in http://orangenoi… etc .. get it? #embracingtheinternet

Danny P: also… it kinda… looks nice?…

TDOA: We would be negligent to not ask you a bit about politics. Do you mind telling us about your perceptions of the West and the view of the United States has changed over the past ten years?

Talha: Of course. The West and the US are synonymous in Pakistan. The US had always been for me the place i saw inside my TV set as a kid, and obviously my perception of it was shaped through the media. It was always the place where all the things were happening but at the same time there was always this sense of ignorance coming across from the west. Over the past 10 years or so the perception hasn’t changed
much BUT a lot of factors that weren’t there before have muddled things up. The internet helped clear this mess up a lot when i started to interact with different people from across the globe. I realized that everyone in their own way was that kid in front of the TV set. The only image they had of Pakistan was what was shown to them and nothing besides that. But I’m glad it’s changing with the whole ‘independent voice taking over the media’s voice’ in the past few years.

Danny P: I’m not the type that typically enjoys discussing politics, it bothers me when I think about it. However, my perception (if any at all) is that the West doesn’t see us as regular, normal, perfectly educated people as much as we’d want them to ‘know’ us to be, some television and news media really distort quite a whole lot of better and positive things that we should be known for as Pakistani’s.
The US is still a top-choice destination for most fresh high-school graduates seeking further education abroad, in return, it makes me question whether the image of Pakistan has changed for the US in the past ten years.

TDOA: Is it possible for you to write music that is critical of the government there?

Danny P: The government claims to be democratic, so yeah sure I guess! :)

Talha: It is definitely possible and there are other bands along with bloggers, columnists and media personnel doing exactly that. But that’s not the message that we would want our sounds to carry along with them. Like i said before, our music is about relating to the listener, the news and everyday life in this country is a reminder enough of the government and their antics. People need a break from that.

TDOA: What’s next for the band? Any plans to make a video and is there any chance of you playing shows outside of Pakistan?

Danny P: Well there’s the full-length LP that we’re hoping to put down this year, A video is something we may look into as we go along. Yes! we would love to play shows outside Pakistan if we get the opportunity to.

Talha: We’re constantly experimenting with different mediums, we have been talking about making a video, i wouldn’t even mind if any other artist would like to make a video for us. Networking has its advantages y’know!? As for shows, we’d love to play shows outside of Pakistan and even tour a little if we get the opportunity to do so. There’s a lotta red tape to go through but something like that shouldn’t be an obstacle for us. TOURRR. - The Dumbing of America


"//orangenoise: //veracious EP"

Saturday, January 15, 2011
//orangenoise: //veracious EP


In maintaining this little music blog, we keep no running count of various parts of the world from which musicians send morsels of their audio craft to our email inbox or front door. In the case of today's featured artist, however, we might just have a first where location is concerned. //orangenoise is an impressive four-piece from Karachi, Pakistan consisting of musicians Talha Asim Wynne (guitar, vocals), Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey (bass, vocals), Danial Hyatt (percussion) and Faizan Riedinger (guitar). As a follow up to their 2009 single The Morning After, the band has a debut collection of five songs in the form of a digital EP titled //veracious. After listening over the past several hours, we've found it almost impossible to choose only one highlight from this new release... so two songs ahead for you. Track number three is titled Trust and it sent us into Lou Barlow-land (if there is such a place?) almost immediately. Have a listen.

MP3: Trust

With influences ranging from classic psychedelia and 60s garage-rock to an amazing take on both early and more recent shoegaze, //orangenoise seems content in tinkering playfully with the past while presenting a beautiful sound of their very own. The new EP //veracious can be found and freely downloaded by visiting the //orangenoise bandcamp page. For those who need a bit more convincing, sit back and listen to the next six minutes and fifty-five seconds of loveliness.
- Milk Mlik Lemonade


"Amazing shoegaze, incredibly compelling songs – what more do you need to know?"

I am a sucker for good shoegaze, and I remember the heydays of shoegaze, when it was overshadowed by grunge in the USA and Britpop in the UK. I remember when “shoegaze” as a label was thought of as an acerbic dirty word, but I never thought of it that way; actually, I thought of it as a red badge of courage or a scarlet A, proof that musicians out there were working on music of artistic substance and disregarded what mainstream radio thought of as appropriate. And of course, all good music is infectious and communicable, and shoegaze is starting to prove its legacy. And if you thought that shoegaze was only for Brits and a few Americans, I have a surprise for you: //orangenoise.



Hailing from Karachi, Pakistan, //orangenoise is composed of Danial Hyatt (drums and percussion), Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey (bass, vocals), Faizan Riedinger (guitar), and Talha Asim Wynne (guitar, vocals). Wearing their red badge of courage with pride, this is truly shoegaze: whirling feedback drenched guitars over memorable melodies and rhythms. But //orangenoise, however, does not replicate the early shoegazers. They have learnt from this style, infused a bit of the 60s, psychadelia, post-punk, and post-rock, and created music that is compelling, urgent, and fresh. Their debut, “//vercious EP” (11 January 2011), is nothing sort of spellbinding, and from the first listen I was in shoegaze heaven.

The EP opens with “Rabblerouser” (one of my favorite words in the English language); closer to the shoegaze of Catherine Wheel than Ride, the song is guttural, earthy, and grounded. Pure shoegaze, free of the etherealness of dream pop, the song is thriving and urgent. Then comes “On the Run,” sporting some garage rock and a 60s influence in the vocal style. “Trust” starts with a feel of serenity, and then crashes into swirling and moaning guitars, continually changing up the sonic intensity; the vocal arrangements are upfront in the first half of the song, leaving the latter half to whirl around through a journey of shifting soundscapes. In terms of a truly classic shoegaze sound (for the purists), there is “Veradicine.” Harrowingly distorted guitars against an ethereal backdrop, which has that near to free-falling-kind-of-feelilng, are juxtaposed against one another to generate a powerful undertow. Of course, it is the closing, “I Know Everything,” that caught my ears the most. One word: Epic! Very classic post-punk meets dream pop / shoegaze, the song is very subtle in its arrangements, but clever enough to sound blatant and grandiose.

Amazing shoegaze, incredibly compelling songs – what more do you need to know? Support //orangenoise!

Track Listing:
1. Rabblerouser
2. On the Run
3. Trust
4. Veradicine
5. I Know Everything

Keep up with at their Facebook and Bandcamp page, where you can stream and/or download the EP. Also, here is the link for guitarist/vocalist Talha Asim Wynne on MySpace and Twitter.

Here is a live performance of “Rabblerouser” and “Veradicine” from the talhavai YouTube Channel.
- SlowdiveMusic Blog


"Interview: //orangenoise"

“It’s more about the feeling, I think the words take away from the feeling a song usually gives you. When you put down words, it becomes subjective. When the listener at the other end might end up perceiving those words as whatever they want to. If the artist tries to portray a certain feeling, that sometimes gets lost in the subjectivity of the words. So we did put words in, but tried to make it more about where the words fit in to the music. It’s a ride, words drowning out and surfacing later again, you enter the song and collect all these little bits of information,” Talha Wynne, guitarist/vocalist for Karachi shoegaze band //orangenoise, talks about how they drown their lyrics within their wall of sound.

Wynne is about to turn 25, working as a sound designer at a radio network by day, and moonlighting as part of the most exciting band we’ve heard in a while. The four-piece recently released their debut EP //veracious as a free download- a thrashy, moody psychedelic five tracks.

“There’s two things happening in //orangenoise – there’s me and Danny, we used to jam and make some psychedelic post-rockish stuff.” Wynne and Daniel Panjwaneey, //orangenoise bassist, used to play in a band called Look Busy Do Nothing. Meanwhile, Faizan and Danial – guitarist and drummer for //orangenoise, were in another band called Mole. “Once, those two were playing, and Danny went out and played for them for this Radiohead (tribute) gig they were doing. I met up with these guys after the gig and we went back to their place, we jammed a little, and I thought ‘Hey we could probably jam with these Mole guys, we could do something.’ Just over a couple of months. This was about March last year, and we bonded to form this noisy little thing //orangenoise, yeah,” he reminisces fondly. Wynne and his bassist had a lot of mutual friends, and it still took a while for them to bump into each other.

Panjwaneey was already quite established in the circuit as a good bassist, and played with Mole on occasion. One day, the four of them were jamming on a friend’s rooftop, and they realized they could really do something together. “Danny is a really great bassist. And also a fabulous chef – he makes excellent steaks.” Mole and //orangenoise are quite closely associated – there are mostly gigs with a Mole followed by //orangenoise, or //orangenoise followed by Mole.”

“We first played at this big collective, there were a lot of musicians, we played a gig – the four guys who are in the band right now, we were filtered out from the whole process of that collective gig.”

The EP recording was completely DIY. “We had a room, the Mole guys were recording their EP alongside us, so we had to match timings and schedule. They had a soundproofed room, actually it was recorded everywhere – the drums were recorded at another friend’s place when his parents were out. We soundproofed the room with quilts and stuff, we basically just wanted to get the sound recorded so we could work on our laptops and make something out of it.” The band is currently working on its full-length album, due out this year. “This EP was kinda like a stepping stone, even during the recording of the EP we were jamming on some songs that we thought we could save for our next lot of material.”

“I listen to a lot of psychedelic, shoegaze-y music. Danny, my bassist, listens to a lot of Tool and Porcupine Tree, a lot of electronica and dubstep. Faizan and Danial bring in all their electronic influences like Flying Lotus and all, and Radiohead. It’s not like one person’s influence changes everything, it’s a combination of the four of us, all of our influences gel together to make something weird that we don’t even know how to define.When we jam, we don’t even know what’s going to happen.”

Wynne has been playing guitar for about five years now, and is a communication designer by education. He studied at Indus Valley School of Art, the only art school in Karachi, and went on to work at an ad agency in Karachi, a job he abandoned to immerse himself deeper into sound. Bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, A Place To Bury Strangers, Me You Us Them, The Brian Jonestown Massacre are some of Wynne’s favorite music at the moment, and he’s currently reeling from recent films like Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan and Gaspar Noe’s Enter The Void. “Growing up, I was listening to all sorts of popular stuff, my dad used to listen to The Beatles and stuff, The Eagles, Santana, I guess my guitar-based rock music was kinda coming from there. But alongside that, I was listening to a lot of jazz and classical music – that appealed to me a lot more than popular music. I was subconsciously into all of this, and I wasn’t into rock music until my college days – where I was introduced to a lot of rock music. I felt like I had to discover this whole spectrum of sound that people have been making for so long. I guess it started off with all that bluesy stuff, which led into jazzy stuff, that led me to rock from the ’60s and ’70s, then finally I landed – somewhere near this noise.”

//orangenoise played their first gig at a popular venue in Karachi, the Pakistan American Cultural Center, in July last year. “It was brilliant. I think all over the world people were celebrating World Music Day, and in Karachi we had this gig where all these different bands were playing. We were asked if we wanted to come play for this and we were like yeah, for sure. Because we had just recently started jamming and we had churned out a few songs. We prefer indoor gigs to outdoor spaces, it gets really loud inside a confined space. You can really crank the speakers up.”

“The entertainment industry is completely dry in Karachi and Pakistan. There are these kids who have musical instruments and they want to play, and they need a place. All these cafes are just randomly popping up all across the city and these bands go there and perform. About 80% of that music is cover-based, mostly like Pink Floyd tributes, Led Zeppelin tributes, blues and classic rock tributes, stuff like that. It’s changing like that, but we’re trying to come out with original music, trying to tell people that it’s okay to have your own sounds.”

“There are a few original bands. Mole, they play some crazy electronic, kinda like dubsteppy hip hop. They’re really talented guys. There’s a band from Islamabad called Bashir and the Pied Pipers. They make this cool drum ‘n bassy thing. Over the past two or three years, there’ve been a lot more bands coming up. Bands are starting to lean toward making original music, but they still need to get out of that shy phase, playing in the shadows, and trying to please the audiences with what they’ve already heard. Rather than coming out with stuff that they should be expressing.” In Karachi, there’s now a gig almost every weekend. The only way that being in an Islamic state affects the band is that, “There are some religious occasions, you really don’t know if you should pull a gig off on those big days, that’s the only conservative bit. There’s no barrier on performance, or what you wanna do.”

Barely a year old and one-EP strong, //orangenoise is already receiving international attention, and are slowly climbing into the internet-spotlight. They’re looking forward to touring anywhere, “but I guess Brooklyn would be fun. It’s open to a lot of craziness, a blend of a lot of different cultures. Also Melbourne, a lot of crazy stuff is happening there. Places that support the noise scene.” They’re also open to signing to a label, “not just any label – we’d want something that has other artists that we sound similar to, so they know where we’re coming from.” Wynne mentions that there is an indie label called Mooshy Moo – it has two bands under it right now, Dalt Wisney and Mole. “The drummer of //orangenoise, Danial- his brother runs this label. He does his own electronic stuff, so yeah I guess that’s one indie label here.”

The Karachi independent music scene is just about emerging, and musicians are still holding on to their day jobs. However, the process of letting go has slowly but irreversibly been put in motion. “Faizan and Danial are doing so much with their music – they’re full time musicians. I’d be a full time musician, at heart I guess.” - NH7: Indiescision


"Free Download and Album Review: //orangenoise. //veracious EP."

As you probably know by now, When The Sun Hits (aka Amber and Danny) have enlisted a handful of brave and intelligent individuals to write guest pieces occasionally for the blog. Our rapid growth since July 2010 (when we were born) has now made it essentially impossible for us to keep up with everything going on in the musical world (without having our heads explode, which would be lame, and/or probably painful). Since we definitely didn't want content to suffer, the solution: super awesome guest writers!

This particular guest writer is a certain Josh Davis, who hails from Milwaukee. He has written one piece for us before, reviewing the incredible Implodes cassette (read Josh's review HERE). Not only does he have excellent taste, he's also a musician, an eloquent and concise writer, and has been known in the past to answer to the mysterious name of The Fucking Wizard.

Below, Josh reviews //orangenoise's massive //veracious EP. We all unanimously agree that //veracious kicks all kinds of arse, and hope you'll enjoy reading Josh's take on the EP (for those interested, we also recently interviewed Talha Asim Wynne, of //orangenoise, which you can read HERE). The review follows bellow. Keep gazing.

Artist: //orangenoise.
Album: //veracious EP.
Label: Self Released.
Release Date: January 2011.

Guest Writer: Josh Davis.

I'm always fascinated by a band's influences, and the effect it has on them, and me. Maybe it's from growing up reading rock criticism, who knows. I always like to know what a band listens to, though, and how they think it figures into their music. Culture isn't a vacuum, after all, and everything comes from something else.

Sometimes, a band manages to combine their influences into something that they've never heard, but that the listener feels they recognize. This is nothing new, of course. I remember asking Rose from Poster Children if the first record by their side project, Salaryman, was influenced by the mighty David Byrne and Brian Eno record, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. She denied any influence, and mentioned a kid who swore up and down that Pkids sounded exactly like the Sex Pistols. And the group of high schoolers we played with in Sacramento, years ago, that sounded like a less-dramatic Shudder To Think. They said they listened to Primus, mostly.

//orangenoise list a number of influences on their Facebook page, and guitarist Talha Asim Wynne shared even more of them in an interview on this very site. Very little of the list is what you'd expect to produce a perfect, twenty-years-lost-sounding British shoegaze EP. But that is exactly what they've done, with their debut //veracious.

//orangenoise. Rabblerouser.

Opener "Rabblerouser" brings a modern touch to a My Vitriol-esque song with burbling drum machine textures in the verses. "Trust" sinks the vocals into a drone stew, with a vaguely Indian feel, but busts out with a thudding 6/4 part. Rather proggy, and not in a bad way. "Veradicine" is a lovely slow drifter that reminds me of an old favorite, Canadian band Mean Red Spiders. And "On the Run" veers away from shoegaze, instead evoking the vocals of one of //orangenoise's explicit influences, Pink Floyd. Except it sounds as if Roger Waters is sitting in with Tsunami!

And then, finally, the masterpiece of this excellent record begins with a sound, to my ears, almost identical to "Slow" by My Bloody Valentine. Nothing wrong with that, of course. But in the midst of the first verse, the drums kick in. Not with the inexact snare rolls of Colm O'Ciosoig, but a perfect baggy beat straight out of the Stone Roses catalog! I'm assuming someone actually did this twenty years ago, and I missed it. It's too perfect of a combination not to have already been done.

Or is it? Yes, kids, the ecstasy has kicked in again...this is "I Know Everything," and it makes me desperately desire more. But that's where it ends, for now.

It's a towering achievement, particularly for a debut record. The touchstones I've used here may be older, but this isn't some retro tripe. The sound is warm and modern. Don't believe me? Well, you don't have to take my word for it.



Just point your browser at their bandcamp page, and download this record. It's free! Go ahead, do it now. There should be absolutely nothing to stop you. It's the first best shoegaze record of 2011, and I can't wait to hear what they do next. Oh! They've already put something else up? - When The Sun Hits


Discography

The Morning After (Single) - March 2009
//veracious (EP) - January 2011

Photos

Bio

//orangenoise is an impressive four-piece from Karachi, Pakistan consisting of musicians Talha Asim Wynne (guitar, vocals), Daniel Arthur Panjwaneey (bass, vocals), Danial Hyatt (drums) and Faizan Riedinger (guitar). As a follow up to their 2009 single The Morning After, the band has a debut collection of five songs in the form of a digital EP titled //veracious. After listening over the past several hours, we’ve found it almost impossible to choose only one highlight from this new release. … With influences ranging from classic psychedelia and 60s garage-rock to an amazing take on both early and more recent shoegaze, //orangenoise seems content in tinkering playfully with the past while presenting a beautiful sound of their very own.

(http://milkmilk-lemonade.blogspot.com/2011/01/orangenoise-veracious-ep.html)

Karachi’s //orangenoise create dreamy, disjointed melodies and never go light on the reverb. Their songs go from ambient to thrashy and back again with the drums turned down and the guitar at center stage. At times, all you can hear are the residuals of a single chord. The production is true to the original incarnation of this sound. //orangenoise is more than just the only band in the region playing this style. They understand the nuances of how to make this stuff really well, and their music rivals the contemporary bands leading the revamped nu-gaze scene today.

(http://www.mtvdesi.com/2011/01/13/karachis-orangenoise-brings-shoegaze-to-pakistan/)