My review: Sun Shines Cold - Light Fades Into Ruins

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

25 giugno 2026

Sun Shines Cold - Light Fades Into Ruins

There are certain conditions, in the quest to uncover the truth, which lead one to glimpse inner landscapes capable of stirring up anxieties and tensions, within a cerebral circuit that highlights one’s connection to new truths: in this respect, music is truly capable of working miracles. The Edinburgh-based duo, comprising Brian Jordan and Colan Miles, undertake a series of explorations on their second full-length album, reaffirming the direction set by their debut whilst broadening the scope of their sensibility, with a keen eye on contemporary issues, and devising a whole range of elements to deepen their artistic inquiry. Tools such as encyclopaedias, slow rhythms to allow for sonic expansions, an imagery that translates personal experiences, and a sense of belonging to the nourishment of technique and the journey towards the harmonious realm of pleasure – whilst also encompassing grey undertones and tensions kept perfectly within the bounds of obedience.

Light Fades Into Ruins is a celestial garden which, amidst the storms of existence, seeks to create rainbows – in footsteps, in dreams – watering the air and energies with an unpredictable sweetness, whilst paying close attention to the power of sound, perfectly ensured by Simon Scott’s production. Having mastered the previous album, Echoes Of A Former Life, now takes a step back to observe, bearing witness to the great maturity achieved by the Scottish band and blessing the whole with his skilful direction. 

An album in which all the seasons come to life, where sustained notes prevail, alongside skilful harmonic exploration and a deliberate intention to give the introductions the ability to perfectly set the scene and foreshadow what is to come.

As always, there is no shortage of references, but this time Brian and Colan have managed to fully express their style and give voice to their own needs, ensuring that a generous measure of originality permeates these thirteen tracks – resulting in an album that feels as though it lasts a whole day, all born of a desire for greater self-awareness. It is not a snapshot, a sound of a moment, but rather an articulation of studies, explorations and inclinations, with the skilful courage of those who, despite concerns about having released too many minutes, actually offer us footholds, refuges, compensations, support and the clear ability to have expressed, alongside their talent, a precise documentation of what is necessary for their existence. We thus find ourselves in the midst of the urgent need for a European listening, as a diligent act of reassurance, as a dutiful scrupulousness to leave nothing to chance.

These are compositions that transcend the tedious tendency to categorise musical genres, offering instead the profound need to invest time free from this constraint, to generate tangles of nerves, electrical cables that embody wisdom and a truly distinctive disposition towards nourishing the soul – a musical prayer in the form of slowly simmering sounds, even when the rhythm seems to be faster and more firmly rooted in physicality. 

Brian’s vocals are careful to serve as an accompaniment rather than a pompous throne: everything flows smoothly; his vocal cords seem to be an additional guitar, and his grace ultimately wins you over and bestows truly immense pleasures, in which the sensation is one of vertigo that teaches the delight of sensory and emotional flows in search of a temple filled with sonic diamonds. 

For his part, Colan has enhanced the melodic writing on the keyboards, and his bass has distanced itself from post-punk without, however, ceasing to insinuate the pleasant suspicion that his origins and background are still there to bear witness to their own importance and value.

There are, still and as always, hints of shoegaze to enrich the textures, lending a broad spectrum of refined taste that aligns perfectly with Brian’s guitars, resulting in a compact core where musical genres are not merely traversed, but experienced as a breath of fatal beauty…

The lyrics are surprising, showing exponential growth in their interpretation, in transforming thought into vowels and consonants capable of creating multiple moods; a design that reveals the wisdom of the perspective, the choice of subjects, and a simple vocabulary that nevertheless challenges the listener’s understanding to preserve the reality of these words, which serve as a further tool, where what is explicit seems to await the web of difficulties in order to embrace it. A striking transformation, a piece that demonstrates just how much this second work is a distillation of wisdom in flight, an oil lamp that illuminates time. 

Capable of creating an amniotic, cerebral and physical addiction, the experience of this gem transforms the sand in the hourglass into an unexpected outpost of successive gifts, a series of illustrations that know how to curb the urge to rush. In the end, it feels as though one has read a book amidst a whirl of flames and clouds, with the soul, lost in thought, having found the right respite. This is not writing aimed at perfect songwriting, but a true scattering of petals and breaths, with songs that grow, listen after listen, like a generous sparkle of somersaults and acrobatic feats in search of a simple gesture: to bestow pleasure.

It is a joy to see the grey confetti of Disintegration and the celestial escapades of Souvlaki reaffirmed, as if they remained their guiding star; yet, at the same time, these compositions reveal a new parallel universe to us and, as I said before, their true maturation is defined by the intention – that delightful stroke of luck – of discovering, in their own hands, a talent that owes nothing to anyone. 

The feelings, reflections, instincts and upheavals (in this sublime album) form the unconscious link that an attentive listener needs: slopes, rhythmic stutters, excursions into the epicentre of dreams, the fragility that transforms from a mask into, impetuously, an unyielding rebel capable of embracing it as a resource. When the vocals and music rise in pitch, one realises that there are peaks that can be scaled even with little oxygen…

One cannot help but adore that sense of anticipation, its slow, lingering movement, which plunges into the warm radiator of sonic trails that smell of nostalgia devoid of sadness, as if propelled towards a present that knows how to stand out. Something Celtic, something folk, drifts through these tracks, like mould disguised as an antenna: a careful listen reveals all this, as if origin could never be rejected. And it is precisely this aspect that makes this approach to Light Fades Into Ruins so intriguing: a long, continuous embrace between one’s DNA and the need to break away from it, in an imaginary garden where the inhabitants have different languages and customs, yet manage to live together in harmony. 

A fire, amidst the winds and shivers, can only penetrate, urging us to become better beings… 

And Sun Shines Cold’s fire is truly intense and essential…

Song by Song

1 - Light Fades

An awakening, a pleasant drowsiness, hints of life, movements that seem like breaths not yet conscious, a hint of tension, mist on the hair, drumming accompanied by a corrosive bass, keyboards whispering waves of sweetness, with the sensation of a melancholy seeking comfort, resulting in a highly evocative instrumental track…

2 - Winters End

Often one closes one’s eyes not to dream but to see the harsh reality more clearly and be able to bid it farewell. The lyrics are an ordeal of stinging nettles and rusty nails, whilst the music manages to find truly dreamlike dimensions, serving as a necessary counterbalance. Nineties shoegaze here becomes a benchmark, a boundary, a journey that makes one’s lungs acutely aware of these dense lyrics, with the whole experience gliding into a timeless cradle…

3 - Wait My Time

Love takes on different forms, and in the story of two people in a relationship we see the discord, the shattered balance, the recklessness and the pain borne solely by one of the two protagonists. The soundscape is a sword that races swiftly, with fluctuations and forays into musical genres like a shy bow, because, in truth, this track showcases the varied and spectacular ability to turn instrumental fusions into a passport to wonder and freedom…

4 - Everything Has Changed

The album confirms the centrality, in the lyrics, of interpersonal relationships (on the one hand) and the move towards subtle stylistic shifts in the music (on the other), and in this specific track we see turbulence coexisting with the epic nature of the drama through visual crescendos and sounds that blend precious elements from both musicians, here in a parade of innovations that could signal their future direction. Almost pop, whilst seriousness and tension are expressed to the full, creating a delightful combination. Alternative, shoegaze and post-punk feast together here, happily…

5 - All I Need

And when darkness grips the mind and leaves but a few days for the future, here is a tear capable of becoming music, a glide through the clouds, a shoegaze haze that draws on The Cure’s Disintegration to ease the pain but not the intensity… The vocals find a way to take centre stage, the surrounding music seems to bow down, and everything soars in a flight where the guitars decide to cross the farthest skies, taking us with them…

6 - Where I Lie

But just how delightful are Sun Shines Cold’s ambient caresses, when they dress as magicians and descend into the craters of risk, with their effervescence commanded to transform into a muffled roar? Yes, there are small ‘walls of sound’, grating away at the melody, but ultimately what prevails is a truly remarkable innocence, the patience in seeking out the most fitting sounds, a network of nerves translated into a pilgrimage of peaceful notes…

7 - Last Sunset

Spectacular, smooth, powerful, medieval in its shadowy passages, modern in its attention to detail, a minimalist track that builds in intensity, a thrill fuelled by almost isolated loops, by guitars awaiting the sunlight, whilst the keyboards converse with the night and the drumming takes us in the direction of Slowdive, alongside a spirituality that needs no words…

8 - Into Ruins

The third instrumental track and yet another demonstration of a Morse code-like language capable of reaching the listener: ‘Into Ruins’ is a secret diary of lunar excursions, a season seeking a landing place in another, with a body of guitars driving the syncopated rhythm and reaching shores far removed from shoegaze. And so we find ourselves immersed in the grandeur of Rohmer’s films, where everything is organised around a precise, visceral theme connected to the present…

9 - A Feeling Unknown

Knowing and forgetting, desiring the truth and its opposite – within this intricate behavioural and literary dynamic – transforms this track into a series of deserts cradled by echoes of rising deserts, a perimeter of notes that are like lovers in search of water, a subtle and golden expression, an intense demonstration that the Scottish duo possess feminine sensibilities in abundance…

10 - I Watched You Fall

Time and its via crucis: in this song we find ourselves in the final reaches of joy, where what prevails is the realisation that everything is surrendered to a conscious legacy. The most intense track on this album, amid tears and endless thanks, within a procession that showcases all the band’s qualities, here in their need to contain and explore the past and the present, and to look towards the future. An enigmatic loop (that of the vocals) settles into the sonic tapestry, giving way to a celestial moment…

11 - Betrayal

A whirlwind of references; many songs and many bands find their way into this track. Yet they, on the other hand, bring their craft to the fore and craft a synthesis in which what has been explored seems like a tail, a trail leading far away… A psychedelic approach within a versatile framework that captivates and holds truly powerful pleasures…

12 - Lost Again

In the penultimate instalment, the duo raise the banner of effervescence and artistic fertility within a sun-drenched enclosure, where everything that appears is a shoegaze ray piercing the dust, in a glow that astounds and turns each breath into a gasping release of toxins. As time passes and the songs unfold, one realises just how much substance lies within their reasoning and their cultural background. Here, for example, we see how various small shifts demonstrate a transcendence of the song form to gain a passport leading to a more tangible beauty…

13 - No Way Back

And it draws to a spectacular close, amidst elegant melodic passages in an ocean of dreams and a space of rays steeped in sadness, with the truth revealing how everything is intertwined to culminate in a farewell in which the arpeggios embody the impetuosity of post-rock, whilst the shoegaze elements are almost silent…

https://sunshinescold.bandcamp.com/album/light-fades-into-ruins

My Review: Amy MacDonald - Is This What You’ve Been Waiting For?

 

Amy MacDonald - Is This What You've Been Waiting For?

The light of need illuminates steps, ideas, makes one aware of the path of one's existence, to channel synergies and new dreams. To do all this requires the power of introspection, of sincerity, of a form that engulfs the intention and makes the soul free of pain.

The Glasgow singer-songwriter returns with a track that offers juicy stylistic novelties, presenting us with what the Old Scribe has just written in the introduction, augmenting everything with sonic mixtures that allow her effervescent pop attitude to determine a whole that sticks first in the mind and then in the heart: there is her whole career in it, the need of a woman capable of walking, travelling and experimenting alone, but without forgetting sharing, loving and/or friendly as it may be, for a desired balance that can give her light.

We dance, with a beginning that contemplates both a dark techno roar and the lightness of a pop feather (reminding us in the singing of early Lene Marlin) to further colour the words, on that voice that is always the beating of wings of a butterfly that takes flight from the Clyde River. The guitars are gentle scratches, the minimalist orchestration grants harmonic soars and the counterpoint is a vocal that opens the pores. 

A song that anaesthetises difficulties by showing the identity card of an artist in continuous transit, capable of finding the ink that determines the quality of her existence. It poses questions (right from the title), describes time with a suitcase and large spaces, and then condenses everything with the thoughtfulness of giving the senses a dominant role.

It is a song in which what wins are genuine skills such as honesty, purity and the determination to leave in the magic circle of existence a sound parchment on which nothing is held back.

Although the song is fast-paced, Amy manages to sneak in the skilful ability to slow the pace, allowing the lyrics and her voice to widen the levees and send the bricks of chill up to the sky. 

The production makes the effervescent dynamic complete, and the result is a spring torch that manages to kiss the sun's rays from an almost sombre gaze.

And when a story told also becomes a warning for its surroundings, then the operation cannot but be perfectly successful, contemplating the beauty of artistic expression and the desire for personal balance, in which the wake-up call is both a concern and an awakening of necessary qualities. Much more than a beautiful song, as it also tends to suggest a different mode of consumption.

Dear Amy: we need your talent and the work of you and your band, who here, once again, prove to be splendid guardian angels...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

30 April 2025

https://open.spotify.com/intl-it/album/7D76N6Tx5MdC6h5itARNT0?si=ysiY-XB6TD2h41-h61sk6Q

https://youtu.be/zDFdgAy0IL4?si=cUFQBG5c-cbuewQl

My Review: Mogwai - The Bad Fire

 

Mogwai - The Bad Fire

A desert finds its source in the sonic bridge of a time spent leaving traces of vibrations in the hope of a landing place, where getting lost and finding oneself is but a beginning.

It was 1995 and everything was falling apart, in the middle heart of a decade in which beauty and ugliness were convincing without osmosis, without megaphones and without silences at the same time.

A couple of Scottish friends chose an epitaph as a sprint, a flash to be extinguished by research, theoretical, on how sound could be enslaved by the beauty of rhythmics and harmonies in search of a parasol. They have always rejected the definition of a Post-Rock band, of pioneers of that genre, and they have done well: if you spend time with the wrong ones, seizing the moment is practically impossible.

The new album does not celebrate 30 years of their career, but rather starts with cycles of chemotherapy of a young daughter.

Nothing artistic but the desire to silence a frustration, a pain, a neurotic avalanche of expanding explosions. Dowsing songs are born, emotions that become expedients, the harmonic rustle of a strange series of conversions, here elevated to the emotional carpet that leaves burrs and flowers overweight, because this work narrates, explains, brings happiness to life through temporal and educational seasons, in a jolt calculated to anaesthetise fears and useless tensions.

The band's intuitions, balustrade and strong moral, since the days of pompous Brit-Pop, have built in the sonic garden of these fingertips a series of intentions that in The Bad Fire find a new resource: to create not only cinematic flows, sound fables and the possibility that imagination has no gags, but rather baggage and handholds, in a story that specifies how the human soul is the first of the planets. The choice of misleading titles (always an attitude that appeared as a desecrating act not to make the pieces a serious thing), reaffirms the concept that in this unique, almost purely instrumental mode live words, thoughts, impulses, brakes and the sparkle of a beam that, between noise and sweetness, defines understanding as a fortuitous gesture and not as a sum of capacities.

A hymn to joy, one to the consecration of the mood that must be taken seriously as adults, one to the pressure of mutant spaces, and yet always with an innovative and surprising willingness to allow joy to tread these grooves. And it is pop, rock, dream pop, alternative, psychedelia, but above all a serious game that searches for the sky and slaps it down with some textures where electronics is by no means an icy thermometer, but rather a new way of generating warmth. 

Diversified approaches, instruments used as a melting pot to which new instructions can be given, to generate intoxicating layers where it is not the journey that counts, but remaining anchored in one's own emotional territory.

One loses oneself in these flights, in these voids, in these jumps and in these frictions, to compose unshakable dreams, doubts and certainties, not to flee but to encounter a world free of syllables and sterile and useless approximations.

Here come Pink Floyd, the Velvet Underground, Television and an impressive series of bald notes, without burrs, without presumptions: the sound (father/master and servant) is this time only the splinter that leaves more pleasure than pain, offers the idea that in the uncertainty of meaning those musical bundles find a cosy bed.

Stuart and Barry have never written songs: they have sought refuge where precisely Post-Rock has placed barriers, stakes and stylistic and attitudinal boundaries. The two are intelligent souls, privateers of the unknown who seek out followers and on the backs of their scores leave the dew of these notes stuttering but never waning, never falling, always, instead, in an ascending flight. What is torpid the two disinfect it, giving the other two members a free garden in which to drop duty and seek a game where hypothesis is never a sterile blotting paper.

Here's My Bloody Valentine and the shoegaze period from 1991 to 1993 offer the Scottish band some trails to follow, with more sadness and nastiness...

There is no pressure, much less conditioning in these streams: music as open windows in the middle of a meadow with no houses, to establish a pact that transcends limits, to produce, as a primary objective, a series of songs that are the words, the gestures, the steps that go round and round in the grooves of a vinyl record that then rises up and leaves everyone without a foothold. Poetry? No! It is definitely an attempt to celebrate a new behavioural vocabulary, in which the disregard for time, art and the obligatory can be anaesthetised. Notes as drops under glass, voices as silent solos without the need for beautiful singing.

Perhaps these roads that invoke an imminent emotional perspective can also bring about a suspension of that sand that in the hourglass only knows gravity. Mogwai create a science-fiction epic, hydrating the habits of experiencing listening as enclosures and finally determining an ordeal that knows how to show rays of sunshine and rainbows on a festive day.

Organs, pianos, harpsichords, mellotrons: these are instruments that are discreetly positioned in the flows, never protagonists but rather gregarious in a complexity that, track after track, manages to make its way into comprehension. But there are others, because in the clamorous work of production it was decided to make the grafts subtle, leaving the solos the task of not being redundant, but the first pupils of a timid respect for an ordered puzzle conceived to leave the ears disoriented in the belly of a flight. There are no signs of tension, of awkwardness, of discord: does that seem little?

They are the directors of an avant-garde that, when free of the desire for useless definitions, will be able to indicate new strategies. The 90s, after all, were an infection for them and, in this new millennium, anything that allows for temporal jumps, between kangaroos and shrimps, can establish the effectiveness of a pleasant confusion that makes the mind a colourful ivy...

The basses are at times unfocused, the guitars often take on the guise of stunned keyboards, the drumming often seems to anticipate: yes, there are glaring errors on the album, on a technical level, not everything fits together perfectly and it is precisely this element that makes it an analogue record in the time of digital, leaving imprecision a wonderful sceptre.

There are no dreams in the tracks, no screams, no exaggerations: everything appears as a village in flight with no intention of taking up residence, a walking with curiosity to precede consciousness.

The time has come to look these compositions in the face and give them a dagger lined with grace, slow and sensual, where they can kiss this hill of running petals...

Song by Song

1 - God Gets You Back

A synth opens the sky, sounds like a restrained delirium, a slowness with the feeling that a speed is imminent and contagious. But it is in this loop that strings of guitars are deposited with a restrained reverb to hold the tension like a switch that explains, from the outset, what will be illuminated in the continuation. When the drumming decides to present the bill to the awkward primordial beauty, one realises how the Scottish band has found an orange oil in the veins of intuition. Hypnosis and delirium...

2 - Hi Chaos

We were talking about mistakes, about non-synchronicity, and here we are faced with one of those moments: where there is a space revealed and not hidden, the sky gods spread smiles. What happens in the second track? We enter into the fullness of the album's title which, in Scotland, means Hell. We meet it, then, in its earthquakes, in its exaltations, in the lanes of thunderstorms and of a chaos to which, like a mantra to which one would like to say no, one entrusts one's pleasure, with the final part of the song teaching how Post-Rock with Mogwai is a sterile and repetitive exercise. Here they play with fire that slows and beats, for it is in slowness that pain finds its perfect throne. The final guitars and bass drive the effects back into a beautiful bath of humility, leaving the song in its disarming perfection...

3 - What Kind of Mix is This?

The introduction (a celestial mantra celebrating Television's second album as they take a walk with Cardiacs) resembles a distorted chain looking for a void to fall into: minimalist until the feet reveal how the pedalboard is just a game to create quality and not hide technical limitations... Here, then, is a swinging hiss that is embraced by silk sticks and fingers that produce wonderful toxins on a bass keyboard...

4 - Fanzine Made Of Flesh

Mogwai are punk, totally punk, punk without identity, madmen without strategy, painters who paint nothingness. 

And when they speak, when they sing, when they are melodic vocals over a distorted, deserted bass, then you understand how the talent to invite a pop refrain to show its skin is nothing more than the centre of gravity of that furious musical and cultural genre...

5 - Pale Vegan Hip Pain

Minimalism, fear that seeks a caress, a tear that doesn't want to die, a winter that fears the sun's spring rays: these are the protagonists of this ballad so close to prayer, for a brilliant thermal condition that seems to land in the confines of Kurosawa, on an evening when the cinema could be the only closet in which to hide. The track starts out slow, proceeds in the same way, but performs a crazy miracle: when the cluster of guitar notes seeks descent, here is the synth, with mammoth sweetness, accompanying this trail of water to the edges of a compelling, enveloping sadness…

6 - If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some Of The Others

You try to relax, in these seven minutes, in which everything sounds like a thesis of a drama searching for wings. Instead: Mogwai prefer tension, they remove the protection from the emotional cables and keep them in a bain-marie, here suspense is an old trick but still capable of conveying consciousness and trembling. A tale, a journey where the instruments experience the intensity of bubbles held by the hair...

7 - 18 Volcanoes

The ignorant always stop at precipitation, at definition without patience. Here is a perfect example: in the first few seconds a foolish multitude might think of a combination of Sonic Youth and Marlene Kuntz. But the band plays at recapturing the magic of krautrock without photocopying it, throwing themselves into the circle of respect for the most hypnotic Beatles to the point of kissing the Velvet Underground with these driven, magnetic distortions. 

The last few minutes are a sonic cry, slowing down the beats by sedating the will of the bass and drums to be the architects of deflagrating surprises. And yes, there is a crescendo, but with simply perfect reins...

8 - Hammer Room

Let there be a rainbow, an afternoon party in a valley crowded with peace and beautiful dreams. Baroque music lends its flank, but then this combo throws itself on the petals kneaded with reflections and everything becomes modern, even more effervescent to the point of allowing the snare drums to direct the sounds towards a robotics that seems to create the right pause in this album that never ceases to confirm and surprise. The guitar solos are minimalist, precise, without smearing of unnecessary excess effects, and when the sound becomes a syringe, the party is over...

9 - Lion Rumpus

Again light, wind, lightness, with the seventies prog children longing for contact. The only track where the lead guitar searches for the bull's eye, but careful listening reveals how the synchronisation of time-space leads the impression to become a certainty: the band has found a perfect excuse to give a short song a feeling of eternity

10 - Fact Boy

There's no two without three: the album ends with a parade of lights, of rolls that bless the melody and structure of a prolonged sound that seeks celestial ascent. The rock here sweeps, wanting no footholds, wrestling with the stop-and-go at the slightest end, to leave these continuous snares the benefit that the metrics can also be a distorted impression. And it concludes in a colourful jaunt with the hope that all the grim but not serious moments of this jewel can generate the memory of a period that does not feed memory to find awareness...

   Stuart Braithwaite (Guitar, Vocals)

Barry Burns (Guitar, Piano, Synthesizer, Vocals)

Dominic Aitchison (Bass Guitar)

Martin Bulloch (Drums)

Producer: John Congleton

Label: Rock Action

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

25th January 2025