Shad Shadows
Shad Shadows, from Ravenna, are a dark electro duo formed by Luca Bandini e Alessandra Gismondi, already together in the specular project Schonwald (with four records and many international live gigs). Released digitally in November 2018 and printed on vinyl by the German label Young & Cold Records starting from 15 April 2019, "Nocturnal" is their second album and is a dystopian concept with the soothing sound of synthesizers and drum machines.
“Nocturnal” by Shad Shadows, a dark electro project of Luca Bandini and Alessandra Gismondi (Schonwald), is already digitally available and will be out on vinyl from 15 April 2019
From Schonwald to Shad Shadows. The duo formed by Luca Bandini and Alessandra Gismondi, in the past side by side also in the band Pitch, doubles.
As Schonwald, active since a decade, the two musicians from Ravenna have released four albums, Amplified Nature, Dream For The Fall, Between Parallel Lights and the most recent Night Idyll (2017), in a stylistic parabola starting from the unmistakable mix of post punk and shoegaze with a teutonical blend and gradually opening to a dreamy psychedelia. Provided with class and experience, Schonwald are authentic wave-bearers of the Italian scene and their adventure has gained important space abroad, with hundreds of concerts in Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Malta, the Czech Republic and, of course, Italy.
The project Shad Shadows, born in the winter of 2014, could be considered as the doppelgänger of Schonwald. This is a second identity, specular and complementary to the first. The references are in this case coldwave, industrial and synthwave, the soundtracks of genre movies and electronic music, oriented to experimentation and to the dancefloor of the 80s/90s. While in Schonwald the main voice is the one of Alessandra, in Shad Shadows is then Luca who sings mainly. Both are interested in contemporary video art and take care of their own image, with a low-fidelity black/white look.
After the full lenght debut Minor Blues (2015) and the EP Fix (2017), Shad Shadows discography is now enriched with the second album Nocturnal, available starting from 8 November 2018 on all digital platforms and out in vinyl next 15 April 2019 thanks to the German label Young & Cold Records. The master is by Daniel Hallhuber, the artwork is by Micha G. Wald.
Nocturnal is an emblematic title for a creature of the night that, armed with synths and drum machines, moves with cool elegance between martial beats and obsessive minimalism, advancing in an artificial fog, in the darkness of a retro-futurist decadence. In ideal company of names like Joy Division, Suicide, John Carpenter, Primal Scream, Moon Duo and Soft Moon. It’s cold, cold music for warm hearts. Articulated in ten tracks, Nocturnal is also a concept about urban myths, where the songs become flashes on a dystopian society – the increasingly undesirable one we have around – drowned into vertigo dreams. Let yourself be hypnotized by the mellow sounds of Battle Of Stones, or dance to the sustained title track and Inside. The single Under Valium, haunting yet narcotic, is also driven by a videoclip. “Under Valium represent one of the most hermetic Nocturnal‘s lyrics. The expressive need, symbolic and surreal, is the rivalry of a dark but ethereal singing: an echo of images leading to a hypnotic mantra. The video is freely based on the aesthetic and psychedelic imagery of the early 90s, in a mix of shoegaze and acid house“. Only darkwavers left alive.
