SHADE
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SHADE

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Band Alternative Rock

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This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

The best kept secret in music

Press


"SHADE press blurbs"


"..sonic, noise-pop sound"
NME


"Pittsburgh's finest postpunk-shoegaze-britpop-whatever group.......splitting its time evenly between the Sunset Strip in 1967 and Manchester in 1979."
Losing Today Magazine


"....a Kevin Shields-like fetish for distortion....like the ending of "Slowfire," where a simple but beautiful four-chord progression hijacks the song at the halfway point, lifting it into space and setting it back down again..."
-The BigTakeOver magazine


"SHADE scrape away at their Pittsburgh hometown's rusty veneer, welding synth-heavy hooks with abrasive guitar shards straight out of the shoegazer handbook."
-SPIN Magazine


"SHADE is Pittsburgh's answer to psychedelic, swirling, fuzzed, shoegaze influenced guitar rock. Fans of BRMC, Jesus and Mary Chain, BJMC, The Chameleons, and Ride will groove to Shade. They sound as if you took all of the gritty edges out of BRMC to make a more melodic sound that soothes the ears...."
-Crashin' In (NYC)


"...'wall of noise' guitars, trippy keyboards, and insistent backbeat groove...."
-LOSING TODAY magazine


"....the admirable Muse-esque instrumental ending of '240 Roll Out'. That's the kind of thing that could fill arenas...'Fedra' sounds like a compilation album of all your favourite bands."
-Heathen Angel (UK)


"....the fuzzed out guitars, throbbing keyboards....Fedra is an extremely strong entry in Shade’s already solid catalogue. It seats them comfortably in the company of fellow American Brit-rock and shoegaze revivalists Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Longwave."
-Scene and Heard (Canada)


"....a heavy dense wall of guitars and spacey rippling organ with melodic pop hooks and dazzlingly beautiful harmonies."
-Step Out Of Line


"....heavily layered guitar style perfected by such acts as Lush, Chapterhouse and Swervedriver with some tasty pitch-shifted keyboards for good measure."
-High Wire Daze Magazine (Los Angeles)


“...This is the type of music New Order could have made if Ian Curtis hadn't killed himself — moody, ethereal and sometimes brilliant.”
-Tribune Review - little bits of articles.....


Discography

"Arms Raised On Rooftops" - SHADE
Released January 30th, 2007 via Lovely Recordings

"Forever"/"You Are The Racer" - SHADE
2nd UK single set to be released on April 3rd, 2006 via Bracken Records

"Keep Them Shouting"/"Trains In The Sky" - SHADE
1st UK single released on January 16th, 2006 via Bracken Records

"Fedra" - SHADE
released October 9th, 2004 on Lovely Recordings

"Forever Now, Nowhere Tomorrow" - SHADE
released July 23rd, 2002 on Pyschodaisy Records

SHADE/Silver Thread Split 7"
released November 8th, 2002 on Pyschodaisy Records
-SHADE- tracks are Gunner/Slowfire

Photos

Feeling a bit camera shy

Bio

The aesthetic of decay is something the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania wears like a crest. Where an industry died and left colossal artifacts of its ruin to rust away in plain sight punk rock raised its clamor of ongoing eulogy, wrote maps of tattoos on its people, and reclaimed the architecture with decades of graffit Still its foolish to think that the only realistic reaction to Pittsburgh's industrial ghosts lies in something so morose. Pittsburgh's Shade may very well be the modern torchbearer of space rock escape, living alongside the culture of decay, and yet somehow managing to resist its pessimistic fashion.
    

Inventive beyond their years, Shade are as adept at venerating their influences as they are at transforming them. Taking in Forever Now, Nowhere Tomorrow, the band's 2002 Psychodaisy debut, or ending up before
them on stage, the most obvious reference points are, at best, starting points. England's early 90's psychedelic renaissance of shoegazer bands like Ride and Lush undoubtedly lives in the blood and headphones of these guys. But on the dirge of 'Marooned', vocalist, Matt Stuart is anything but pillheaded--let alone uncertain. His delivery recalls the most thoughtfully self-destructive promises of a young Elvis Costello--a characteristic reinforced on "Spider Rock", when Craig Stuart's whirring organ fill transports the northern soul groove back to the dynamo days of "Oliver's Army".
  

With a rhythm section like this, (Stuart's keys are joined by Brad Kiefer on bass, and Dave Halloran on drums) the low-end brings Shade's music to a crossroad of Paisley Park-funk and post-shoegaze rock and roll. David Woods' guitar rounds out the line-up, imparting everything from seagull-squall to Eddie Hazel-worthy f-punk graffitis.
      

Like latter-day Primal Scream before them, Shade's soul rhythms ultimately serve as the long-burning kindle to that immutable guitar noise, a heavy metal sound living in dancing shoes beneath colored light. On
stage this relationship moves in better ways still. The hummable quality in any given tune from their debut all but vaporizes in a show of instinctive, and instinctively loud expression. They are one of the few
songwriting acts of their class who take the tasks of performance as seriously as their compositions require. This is not merely the recital of a sound, its the spreading of the word.  

by Bryan Mickle