Lights Out Asia

I’ve never been astounded by anything from "experimental” electronic label n5MD. On the whole, their catalogue houses a good number of middle of the road, ambitious producers with a lot to say and a heavy belief in the force of music as an emotional and social tool. Tool is right. Lights Out Asia is the side-project from members of post-rock also-ran Aurore Rien, and both projects stem from the triad of fallback influences: Explosions, Mogwai and Godspeed. Lights Out Asia add a slice of shoegaze to the pot, and their second album, Tanks and Recognizers, finds the band spending a lot of time on guitar wails amidst washing keys meant to shimmer and shine in the twilight of a dying life. They’re probably the kind of people who don’t care about critics, which is fine, ’cause it means I don’t mind saying that this is the electro shoegaze equivalent to the types of commercial emo bands I don’t bother learning the names of. Trying too hard is evident in some people, and we can smell our own.