In the last post, we discussed the emergence, influences, and core characteristic and sounds of shoegaze, the genre/movement born in the 1980’s influenced by experimental and alternative rock acts, and British post-punk acts of the early 80’s.
When shoegaze came about, numerous bands started to show up exploring and innovating these new sounds and creating new landscapes. And with its emergence, shoegaze had a twin brother: Dreampop.
The common factors of the two genres can be the lush and ethereal sounding wall of sounds created with heavily effected guitars with the use of pedals, and the laid back, sometimes vocalized voices to add layers and textures to the wall of sound.
The influences of what would pave the dreampop sound can be traced back to the 60’s, with jangle-pop and psychedelic bands such as The Beach Boys and The Byrds, and even producers such as Phil Spector, often credited as the first producer to introduce the use of wall of sounds in pop iterations.
A particular song by The Beach Boys, All I Wanna Do, is sometimes credited as a proto iteration of what would later be coined as dreampop in the 1980’s. The term was first coined when in 1986 the duo A.R. Kane was founded, merging elements of free jazz, and psychedelic rock.
Alongside A.R. Kane, other bands were also credited as the first dreampop bands, such as The Cocteau Twins, which is often used to exemplify the sound of dreampop.
Different from shoegaze, the dreampop layers of sounds, also created through the use of electric guitars, don’t rely on the heavy use of distortion and distorted guitars, but instead will use effects such as chorus, reverb and shimmer reverbs, tremolo, and many other modulation effects.
Dreampop’s style of communicating and evoking emotions also makes heavy use of its videos and album covers through lush and colored landscapes to emulate a dream-like state, and long-exposure imagery.
Other famous bands such as Slowdive and Ride can navigate between the two genres depending on the album or song.
Much shoegaze, dreampop wasn’t a genre deliberately created or manufactured, but a chain of events that led to a particular kind of sound.
And as shoegaze, dreampop still has new bands being founded under the genre to this day and gained a faithful cult following, with audiences still buying records and attending venue.
Just like the last post, pedal partners also did a video on the main characteristics and sounds of dreampop:
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