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A Sunny Day in Glasgow is touring this spring making a stop in San Diego. They will play Soda Bar in North Park on 3/14. They released a digital / vinyl-only EP titled, Nitetime Rainbows this week on Mis Ojos Discos. The album is an eclectic mix of new ASDIG cuts and remixes by The Buddy System, Benoit Poiulard and Ezekiel Honig.
ASDIG music is at times very epic in length and in construct, with dream-like transcendental feelings permeating everything; they take the listener on a journey through shifting and swirling worlds where lyrics and sounds twist around each other. Underneath their dense sound is alluring melodies and a playfulness that keeps the music fun, thus separating them from the sea of mediocre shoe-gaze knock-offs pirating the past without creating something authentic and new.
This project has a protoolian foundation though it moves in so many directions. Yet, all the songs seem to be grounded by a very engaging, organic feel. This warms the digital production, making it an all-together salacious mix of atmospheric sounds and chorus style vocals. To sum it up…imagine a f’ing great party inside of a Cathedral.
Don’t miss A Sunny Day in Glasglow in San Diego on 3/14 at Soda Bar. To learn more about this project read an interview with Ben Daniels, the wizard behind the curtain, so-to-speak, of this experimental, electro-fused project:
A lot of publications have reported on ASDIG and often use the label “second generation shoe-gaze” when doing what journalist do best, that is define by comparison…what does shoe-gaze mean to you guys and is it a fair term to use when defining your sound?
I can understand why people use that term with us, it makes sense to me. But I've always tried to distance this band from it because I think the overwhelming majority of bands labeled "second generation shoe gaze" or even the first generation, are/were incredibly boring. There were only a small handful of bands that had something original and new to get across and these few bands did it using an aesthetic that everyone else jumped on and used to make boring music. I also understand that there are probably a lot of people who would level that charge against us, but I am really trying for something (if not new) different.
Do you find these labels to be helpful in communicating the vision, feel or style of a band or do you perceive it to be laziness on the part of the journalism community?
Honestly, more laziness. But I guess if you have to review hundreds of albums you have to use these kinds of things to help you save time. Still, I feel like they do so much more harm. I mean any label here. Because someone will hear it and think they know what the band is all about without listening to it. I usually try to argue against any labels people apply to us just in the hopes of at least creating some kind of confusion so a potential listener will maybe feel like they have to listen to it to figure it out for themselves.
You bury a lot of beautiful melodies deep within the music…with an often elaborate (or seemingly elaborate) and almost ethereal like sound-scape layered on top…explain a little bit about your chemistry when writing material and how does the creative process works for you?
There's no real formula or anything. I almost always write some music and then start to play around with it. Usually I'll make some mistakes or sounds will just kind of bubble up. Once there is a more coherent structure then I can usually start writing lyrics. And then once vocals are recorded, more sounds usually come out or get cut out. Sometimes I'll hear a noise or some random sound and a song will just grow up around that. And sometimes, very rarely but most welcomely, you just sit down and everything gets written in a half hour and it's done. The last one is the best.
Your songs are at times, very epic in length and in construct, with dream-like transcendental feelings permeating everything; you take the listener on a journey through shifting and swirling worlds where lyrics and sounds twist around each other. What’s the impetus for all the movement in your songs?
Wow, that sounds nice. Thanks. I couldn't say what the impetus is. This is just what comes out while I am trying to make boring music.
Any last remarks or comments?
Thanks for listening!
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