Lily Donaldson Cubus Fall 2013 Collection

After a decade flirting with shoegaze and dream pop textures, Ulrich Schnauss has returned to his IDM roots with A Long Way to Fall. On his first album (fourth overall) under his name in six years, the German producer almost fully focuses on the synthesizer, nearly abandoning the layered fuzz and tempered haze of his last two solo releases, while eliminating the slow-burning, buried vocals of his work with Mark Peters and A Shoreline Dream. Stretching each song past the five-minute mark, Schnauss lets his work gestate on A Long Way to Fall, letting simple, sometimes nonexistent refrains repeat and recur until some sort of unshakable melody is revealed…

Dead Meadow's unique marriage of Sabbath riffs, dreamy layers of guitar-fuzz bliss, and singer Jason Simon's high-pitched melodic croon have won over psychedelic pop/rock and stoner rock fans alike, while elements of folk and pop would creep into their formula over time. Although the band's members met while attending all-ages shows in and around Washington, D.C.'s punk/indie scene, the trio draws more of its sound from such classic rock legends as Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath. The trio formed in the fall of 1998 out of the ashes of local indie rock bands the Impossible 5 and Coulour, with singer/guitarist Simon, bassist Steve Kille, and drummer Mark Laughlin. The three members set out to fuse their love of early-'70s hard rock and '60s psychedelia with their love of fantasy and horror writers J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft. Collection includes: "Dead Meadow" (2000); "Howls From The Hills" (2001); "Got Live If You Want It!" (2002); "Shivering King And Others" (2003); "Feathers" (2005); "Old Growth" (2008); "Three Kings" (2010); "Warble Womb" (2013).