violet oscillation release heaveness on 30 October, the Thames Valley shoegaze trio's follow-up to a debut EP heard as far off as Chile, the US and Switzerland.
violet oscillation, the shoegaze band fronted by Oxford-born Luca, release their next record, heaveness, on Friday 30 October. It follows the band’s debut EP, it has become clear to me that all those who seek, which the group says found listeners as far away as Chile, the United States, Italy and Switzerland.
The band is one half of pedal partners, a collective of three musicians, Luca and the twin sisters Paige and Rebecca, who between them make records, films and guitar effects pedals from the Thames Valley. They style every name in lower case, and so do we here.
“pedal partners is a creative collective of three musicians, Paige, Rebecca and Luca, deeply embedded in Thames Valley music culture,” Paige told The Oxford Post. “The trio self-built an independent platform that celebrates and champions the music culture of Oxford and Oxfordshire through a process of autoethnography.”
A genre that started here
Shoegaze, which the group’s site describes as “heavy shoegaze guitars drenched in distortion & reverb”, is the genre the collective says it has spent a decade reviving. Its own site calls the Thames Valley “home of the original shoegaze scene”.
“Over a decade they have documented their journey reviving a local musical genre, Shoegaze, through their music, films and signature guitar pedals,” Paige wrote. “In doing so, pedal partners continue to bring global attention to Oxfordshire county and the Thames Valley region, acting as cultural ambassadors which popularise the region’s art.”
The members play in two bands. violet oscillation is Luca’s project; abstract in sound is the twins’ band, which the group’s site describes as “swirling heavy shoegaze guitars” under “soft, delicate feminine vocals”.
What heaveness sounds like
The group describes the new release as “featuring their signature Shoegaze guitar tracks and ethereal vocals from Rebecca and Paige”, so the twins sing on Luca’s record as well as their own.
The debut EP drew reviews that the band quotes on its site. Oxfordshire Music Scene called it “the very dna of thames valley shoegaze”; Chile’s Dream Dream Pop wrote that “violet oscillation are at the heart of the shoegaze resurgence”; Post Punk Magazine in the United States said “the performance has the emotional scale that made shoegaze compelling in the first place.”
The EP is on Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Music. The band’s video for its track veil is below.
Films and pedals
Rebecca Berry is the group’s filmmaker and runs its social media. Her video essays and music films go out on the pedal partners YouTube channel, which the group says puts Oxfordshire in front of hundreds of thousands of music fans abroad.
The collective also designs effects pedals. Four are listed on its site, the Mesmeriser, Dreamgazer, Reminiscer and Blush, sold through the pedal maker Maneco Labs. The group says it was picked by Fender and Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine to help launch the Shields Blender pedal, and that it has worked with Simon Scott of Slowdive.
abstract in sound’s track Reminiscer, which shares its name with one of the pedals, has its own video:
Where to hear it
heaveness is out on 30 October. Links to stream both bands, the pedals and the group’s mailing list are on thehomeofshoegaze.com, and the group posts on Instagram and TikTok.
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