My review: Moon Cowboy and Krissy Vanderwoude / surfboards and desert storms - the Mojave 3 covers

 Moon Cowboy and Krissy Vanderwoude /  surfboards and desert storms – the Mojave 3 covers 

Review by

Alex Dematteis 

Musicshockworld 

Salford

21 October 2026

When different enchantments come together on a stave, it can happen that the emotion and the joy become a perpetual sigh, with the shutters of the soul letting light into the heart…

Mojave 3, Moon Cowboy and Krissy Vanderwoude are the protagonists of all this: an EP due out on Friday that brings together entities, magical figures and credible stand-outs to open circles, riding the idyll of real and hypothetical encounters, with three tracks written in the 1990s, each very different from the others, capable of making us imagine the vastness of the sky through the lens of Neil Halstead’s band, Rachel Goswell, Ian McCutcheon, Simon Rowe and Alan Forrester.

Three gems that have remained untouched by the interpretation, by the need to add further hands and vocal cords, managing to prolong the ecstasy and fidelity, all seasoned with a heartfelt process of genuine respect. The chosen songs also highlight the scope of Ricardo Fiel’s talent; he is completely at ease, keen to continue his own distinct artistic journey, one characterised by style, identity and recognisability. We find that the sacredness of the original versions remains intact, yet with a touch of more subtle, almost veiled colours, so as not to convey any arrogance, conceit or other such nonsense.

No, here we witness a moment of stillness, a near-silence, soft shoegaze expressions that convey feelings and expansiveness, as if those ‘old’ songs could sustain a new youthfulness. Above all, these new versions have the ability to stand alongside the originals without fear of negative judgement.

Ricardo and Krissy spread their wings, leaving their mark and their individual characteristics on a canvas that shows how something perfect can have its own evolution, without detracting from anything. It happens rarely, and when it does in this way, one can hail it as a miracle, embrace the joy and let it settle within these grooves, without shame. 

The voices are more subdued, hushed, yet the dynamics are impeccably crafted to convey not timidity but a fluid resolve – a cycle of impulses governed by sound, which proves to be more expansive. The musical language of this album fosters a sense of calm; the rich musical foundation welcomes the vocals with a smile, embracing them, whilst an emotional wave captures their delicacy and elevates it to a state of supremacy. Mojave 3’s blend of folk, alternative country and slow-paced dream pop is transformed into a celestial stroll, a journey back in time, as if these compositions hailed from the nineteenth century, with a subtle yet decisive reworking. Krissy pierces the clouds from afar, sips at her shyness before unleashing her inner drive, within which lie devotion and gratitude for this project and for her previous work under the name Slowdive. She wraps a scarf around her voice and listening becomes a tear, a vibration, a bow to her ever-evident desire not to take centre stage or prove anything in particular: when she opens her mouth, what emerges are beats, caresses, dreams transformed into sound that teach us to listen with due attention, as we feel all her joy, maturity and a long list of talents. She returns after a long absence and has found in Ricardo a seafront where she can let her fears drift out to sea, rediscovering her self-confidence. A duo that began (I would say very humbly) not from within themselves but from ambition, from putting themselves to the test, from experimenting with a working process that could easily have caused them to run aground.

Yet here they are: light, dense, oxygen-rich gills that lend their own class, allowing us, amongst other things, to savour once more the dangerous game of comparisons. It’s a shame for the incompetent: in the end, we find ourselves with six songs, six stories, tales, vastnesses with distinct identities, gathered round a glass of wine, laughing and embracing one another first…

The talent of these two artists – physically distant yet adept at bridging that gap – brings us back to considering what a true artistic journey really is: rules, commitment, identifying the necessary distinctions, choosing the means and methods, to bring it all together in a space that becomes precious, useful and unassailable.

The selected tracks offer, on the one hand (when listening to the originals), the certainty that time does not defeat beauty and validity, and, on the other (with the versions presented under the title ‘Moon Cowboy’), the assurance that there exists a time and place where dreams, instincts and the need to test oneself can lead to risk, to the danger of failure, yet ultimately triumph…

Those among the shoegaze faithful who turned up their noses at the obvious shift in direction taken by those members of Slowdive will now have the audacity to think that this is exactly how they should have sounded. But (and I’m sure this is the majority) those who applauded that stylistic shift back then will do the same today for this release: a unique pairing, with a different appearance, yet deliberately capable of speaking the same language – that of nourishment for the soul…

All you have to do is put any comparisons to one side and observe, instead, how one perfect picture can give rise to another…

The EP will be realised on Friday 23 October on Bandcamp

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My Review: IAMTHESHADOW - So long, Lost

 

Iamtheshadow - So long, Lost

An inevitable form of seduction gravitates in the womb of a musician so pregnant with explorations, specifications, mental advances into the realm of mystery and its tangles, educating his compositional growth to reach the highest depths, conquering the listener and rendering them speechless.

Pedro Code with his IAMTHESHADOW (which includes the moving and talented Vitor J. Moreira) relies this time on the search for new sounds, focusing with analogue synths and analogue rhythm machines to electrify his visual perimeter in a different way.

The performance confirms his rising talent, while the shadowy areas (typical and essential) are further hypnotised and frozen in this ballroom where the protagonist struggles to survive.

The result is a wave that descends from the Serra de Sintra to connect the description of mental struggles to the impoverished surroundings.

Pedro sings with a lump in his throat, digging into his sensual low register, making friends with synthesizers to lull us with long sound waves.

The new look, with an attitude that projects the band towards a more robust muscular form, definitively confirms the need not to rest on their laurels: the song surpasses the long history of the Lisbon band and positions itself as an indicator for the new album to be released in 2026.

Old Writer is also struck by the lyrics: a mourning that encompasses people, faith, dreams, pain and struggles.

There is no surrender, but rather an honest and sweet sadness that underlines the inevitable human decline. Pedro forces us to close our eyes and alert our conscience so that it does not fall dormant.

This single resembles the only serious Christmas gift we could receive this year: where what is celebrated is something real, concrete, terribly human.

We dance with our backs bent but drunk with joy: the duo never ceases to amaze us and to lead us forward into the realm of pain that teaches us how to live...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld 

Salford

19 - 12 - 2025

https://open.spotify.com/track/1Q9avdByMeDaD1ayzpLrhC?si=8xMM-HojTBKRJOBs_3RYBQ

https://music.apple.com/gb/album/so-long-lost/1860986751?i=1860986758

My Review: IAMTHESHADOW - To End What Never Began

IAMTHESHADOW - To End What Never Began

There are legends from ancient cultures, dispersed in the air but still alive. It sometimes happens that deep contemporary souls manage to get in touch with them and act as conduits and messengers, to expand unimpeachable truths, to make the darkness of the soul an expense for everyday consciousness. Where acquiring awareness means banishing ignorance and making the belly a thinking volcano.

Pedro Code is definitely a magician with this kind of ability and talent, the one who nowadays drags that era and those characters into his artistic work, a priest outside any religious order but able to transform us into beings blessed by his undeniable powers. His new work is an incredibly mobile simulacrum in which the cold marble freezes any escape on our part: a work that is simply crazy, enriched with a benevolently false modernity, because there is no doubt that in his hands there is an arcane yearning and a way of doing things in which the spirits of the past reside. Together with Vitor J. Moreira he puts on an undiplomatic show of destruction, alienation and torment, to the point of creating a glass bubble that falls on our skin.

Portugal becomes a cellar that takes flight with theatrical exuberance and magnitude, chilling the fearlessness of a reality that is already dying without its knowledge, and these songs smell of righteous punitive blasphemy, in a decadent transfiguration of intimacy, through a continuous tide of synths to paralyse time, a fact already included in the majestic and biting title, containing an inevitable paradox for us all.

Here is awareness becoming a flag lowered and over whose tatters stands the misty blanket of an archetype that holds back escape. The record (an apparent expanse of coldwave between gothic fires and a dark electro full of pins) is a slow procession of philosophical discourses between, precisely, legends and Pedro: dark games of millenary writing and listening create a blackish fluid, in which nothing can console and for this very reason dependable, majestic and disheartening in a stupendous way. 

The compact structure helps to grasp the depth of arguments with rust-filled chains, where the key to happiness has been thrown away in a day of total delirium. 

Aggressive, desperate but full of that sad sensuality that makes it perfect, this latest album never plays with existence and, on the contrary, gently slaps it in the face. It feels like watching old hands enter brains and leave mud and rotten moss: it is only the opening scene of this emotional bombardment that makes the band of the wonderful Cold Transmission an illogical guide before silence. Everything is a restrained cry, dispersed, dilated, imprisoned in a night where tears become the smile of pain.

The previous, excellent, The Wide Starlight, was still somewhat tied to the duo's past, between skill, effective means and quality. The new chapter not only certifies maturation, but specifies how a great cloak over the statue of their intellectual presence generates a rupture while preserving the dna, and it is here, in this enchanting contrast, that IAMTHESHADOW manage to diversify themselves and integrate with a project that is a catapult with long range.

The vocals and the mode of singing are truly a delirium of dull light, capable of passing through the throat and sinking into the heart, shattering the tissues it encounters. The music is a vessel that takes in fifty years of attempts, of false convictions and scourges them, simplifying everything with extreme clarity and sincerity: there is no pomposity, no manieristic traits of hardened tradesmen, but rather an ideal marriage between harmony, rhythm and essence, leading to a truly impressive stylistic skeleton.

An apologia that reaches the sacred, sublimating the laboured breath, and, despite the great use of electronics, seems only a screen of the compositions of the dead angels of two millennia ago. The notes fall into the path of silence, bending the backs of trees and leaves, of our cravings for an emptiness that does not empower us, but the band from Lisbon takes us by the hair sentencing, abjuring, tickling spells, dragging us to an altar where there is no forgiveness.

The lack of the burly, gravitational guitars of the first albums is an act of courage but above all a cunning manoeuvre of conscience: they no longer have a way of making the vicissitudes of tormented souls believable. Instead, these geometric and torrential intersections of synths, loops, combined with the faithful drum machine, confer the power of stun, jolting us to our feet, two centimetres from the abyss.

Adorable is the immediate expression of frozen lava that reaches your face, with keyboards like blades, deconstructed samples and an archive of secrets that shows only the tip of its hair. It is a continuous, fluid dance, in contact but not connected with the past: IAMTHESHADOW know how to stand out, to be out of the cauldron, out of the mould and to present a hefty bill as listening to this To End What Never Start is a purifying manifesto, an agglomeration of novelty given its character integrity and with the poignant aim of putting an end to idiocy. Like a life lesson between the notes, on a school day without recess, like a work day without pay, where there are no legacies but constant pressures...

It takes a sip of liquor that numbs the sight and other senses to be able to resist this act of cruel beauty, track after track...

Song by Song

1 - To End What Never Began

Time, with its dilation on hills full of dust, is represented by this instrumental opening, a set of moods capitalised by a keyboard that skilfully circumnavigates it, to make the pain palpable through a few but touching notes.

2 - Bleed Dry

The second single to anticipate the release of this new album is a torment that, through vocals and a surgical musical operation, pours the duo's ever-precise connection onto the listener, with compact descent into the mental circuits of those with multiple wounds. When dark electro lives with sparks in the magma of an obedient coldwave.

3 - This Vertigo

The tempo rises, in contact with the drama of a fading soul: a song that reminds us of Clan Of Xymox in their most disturbing period, as here we witness an electronic procession with skilful electric aggregation, for an incredible moment in which synths marry with a blackish pop.

4 - Pain Come Close

Here the first single finds in the context of the album even more expressiveness, sacredness, in its sad, sidereal, anguished dance. A marvellous act of simplification that sends shivers down your spine, as the keyboard is a hammer that alternates harshness and sweetness, while Pedro pontificates and blesses the lyrics with melancholic attitude.

5 - Changing Spaces

One finds oneself anchored in this wandering of places, here emphasised, manifested and skilfully described with silence creeping into the notes causing spasm and delirium. The scent is Darkwave, but on a Post-punk patina where the crossover makes this song a bridge from which to plunge our souls into the changing spaces beneath us...

6 - Seizing Emptiness

A summary, a slingshot, a pamphlet full of fire inside a clod of ice sums up an entire career but, in this album, translates and transports the bewilderment of existence into a dark electro circuit of remarkable intensity, through an unquestionable and incredibly warm linearity...

7 - Hell Is Where Your Heart Is

The Portuguese duo knows how to combine melody and drama: a pilot is hired to guide dreams inside a reddened, combustible sphere. Echoes of the eighties in tear-filled cellars leap into the sky, with the instrumental part thumping and vigorous, through a strategic and evil synth.

8 - All That You Might See

The introduction, those few seconds swollen with rotting salt, are enough to make this track the hiding place of our fears. Notes garrisoned by a cosmic scent, endorsed by a voice that cleans the sky, and the perception that there is a palpable blindness in these flagrant sensory activities...

9 - Next Belief

A leaden palette controls the heartbeat: a song that is ancient theatre, an avalanche of marine condensates, like free-flowing seaweed, advances on vapour-filled notes, in continuous suspension...

10 - Ties To The Lost

A feverish state settles in this dancing amalgam, a torment that defines the absolute explosiveness of loss, with a plot that advances, dilating just enough to become a God in search of resignation. Sad, merciless, searing, a lava bullet that sinks inexorably...

11 - A New World

The beginning makes us imagine Front 242 in Lisbon, but then it is all the Portuguese band's work that manifests itself in this territorial exploration, through a schematic foray into the dry puddles of soulless streets...

12 - As The Infinite Drowns

The concluding act is a dream that materialises, clearly, subtly, delicately, in its opening moment, and then seeks rhythm and twisting dramas: the singing produces that dose of shivers necessary to close the coat and begin a walk in the paths of an uncertain future. Rhythm is the throne on which the melody, dry and full of tears, creates a combination that provokes emotion...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

16th October 2024

https://iamtheshadow.bandcamp.com/album/to-end-what-never-began

My Review: IAMTHESHADOW - The Wide Starlight

 IAMTHESHADOW - The Wide Starlight

Class, the mysterious Goddess who never picks at random, blesses those who receive it and invites them to use it, to scrutinise its essence and add something of themselves to increase its dimensions.

Pedro Code does nothing more than accomplish all of this, taking his creature IAMTHESHADOW into the zone of perfection with the Portuguese band's latest album, which is bold, profound, with its twelve songs that are all kisses with black lipstick and binoculars that let us see the details of the human soul from afar. Listening to them, something in the mind lights up and you realise that only in the darkness of the soul  you can see what you really need in this existence. The growth of the band is noticeable, everything is compact and smooth, the tears that fall are dressed in a not too bitter taste: Pedro has calibrated the tastes perfectly and given Darkwave the task of being gentle. In reality, one swims within concepts that cannot be relegated to musical definitions. Of course there are connections to branches of this genre, but that is the least of the things to emphasise.

What conquers is that there are no discounts: everything is rough and real, but placed with a brilliant decadence that leads one to accept this grey wind that brushes against the skin. 

A sonic concept because everything sounds like one long track, a tale about illusions and inner turmoil with those conscious desires about what is possible and what is not.

In all of this, the music bewitches: married to the lyrics, it becomes a mountain that embraces the sea in a gothic grip but is also accessible to those who do not have this genre of music among their favourites. And this, too, is a miracle that lives inside this record, a perfect summary of the path taken over the years, the ability to offer something different and the certainty that Pedro knows how to instruct the work to combine it with talent.

The guitars are hints of rays, never boastful, never violent, always delicate, with a smile that tends downwards, where areas of gloom hang on the sides. The synths are the painters of the project, sound engineers and masters of simple and therefore human and believable melodies, where it is the concept that guides the fingers to create lines that wrap around a warm listening experience. The bass, always powerful, is a careful guardian, travelling from the 80s and experienced, supporting the songs almost more strongly than in other works.

Here, everything charms, seduces and our listening becomes intense and numerous, because the need to repeat it this time is not from pleasure but from necessity. Here: IAMTHESHADOW produces something real and the applause turns into a new play...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

21st January 2023

https://iamtheshadow.bandcamp.com/album/the-wide-starlight