Bandcamp Picks of the Week 10/3/2025

It’s our Bandcamp Picks of the Week, featuring the timeless technicolored ambiance of Kevin McCormick & David Horridge’s LIGHT PATTERNS and one of the best under the radar shoegaze releases of 2025 in Chatham Rise’s TRILLIUM!

Kevin McCormick & David Horridge – LIGHT PATTERNS

Genre: Psychedelic, Ambient

Favorite Tracks: “Coast Lines,” “Sandpatterns,” “Quickdance”

While marked by the leathery joy of new wave and the roots of hip hop, the early ‘80s were a hotbed for ambient. The term was coined a few years prior, giving artists a new set of rules to disregard alongside an ever-expanding toolset of digital noises. Kevin McCormick and David Horridge’s sole joint venture, LIGHT PATTERNS, exists in this pocket but reads less of ambient as it does the tinkerings of the Ives brothers or Vini Reilly. The record remains remarkably dexterous in this middle ground. Thankfully, for us curious listeners, it was recently republished on vinyl by the madcap luminaries at repress label Smiling C.  

LIGHT PATTERNS doesn’t follow the woeful tale of most forlorn records from years past; there’s no label exec snuffing their rollout or martyred solo careers to mention. Per label, the duo met in 1970 while working in the Labour Exchange Office in Manchester, bonding over a shared desire to play atmospheric music. They played in clubs around the city to agreeable audiences and scored a record deal with the boutique label of Pink Floyd’s previous manager, Peter Jenner, Sheet Records. Here, they recorded an eleven-track LP, one of only eight records associated with the short-lived label.

In this new life, the record enjoys uniformly stellar quality of tracks. While remaining tethered to a central ethos, the record floats into bossa-like rhythms, stoned-out drones, and English folk songs. In this, the record is most bright at its warmest moments; a track like “Quickdance” practically fabricates nostalgic beach memories upon arrival. The music is blissed out to say the least (the original hype sticker reads “cheaper than valium”) and minimalist to those who care for discernment. There’s rarely more than three elements at play, with at least a guitar (McCormick), often a fretless bass (Horridge) and sometimes a synthesizer (a Mr. Rob Baxter), but the sounds permeate and diffuse so effortlessly that you wouldn’t know you’re bathing in it. It’s this unforced simplicity that informs the playing and guides you to take a deeper breath. So take it and relax on Bandcamp.

Chatham Rise – TRILLIUM

Genre: Shoegaze, Space Rock

Favorite Tracks: “Splinter,” “Angus Says,” “Trillium Reprise”

The 2020s have already been a great decade for fuzz lovers; bands in the vein of Slowdive have found success while labels like Julia’s War host bands reinterpreting its hallmarks into something of the future lineage. Amid the flurry of change and recanonization, Chatham Rise return with their third LP, TRILLIUM, reminding us that bands can both create an album in classic shoegaze form, honoring those typified kinks, and do it without losing any sense of honesty.

Releasing their debut in 2015, the group has served as a weathervane for giants like My Bloody Valentine and The Jesus & Mary Chain passing through the twin cities. The more apt description might be lighthouse; for a band from Minneapolis, the sound is surprisingly unlandlocked, reading as aquatic, if not cosmic. The silverine, soaring notes throughout the tracks aren’t foreign to what might play behind footage of large, peaceful mammals floating adrift. Under these climbing melodies, there’s a simmering cauldron of primordial soup that fills the soundscape.

While the blissed out drums are present as ever before, TRILLIUM sees the group comfortable with a quickened pace, something closer to Manchester’s Factory Records than the comfortably numb spunk of Oxford’s Ride. While draping vocals over the tracks, “Splinter” has a distortion that echoes as sinister and ravenous with an arty bend that pays off. “Angus Says” plays a similar hand, this time featuring genre celeb Paula Kelley, previously of Drop Nineteens, on vocals. In addition, Mark Refoy of Spacemen 3 adds a tasteful amount of telecaster to a remix of MEADOWSTREET’s opening track, “The Riddle.”

Throughout the record’s fanfare and excitement, there’s an honest and respectable dedication to the craft of shoegaze. These guys have loved the genre for over 30 years and each new album of theirs serves as a church to the icons that built it. On Bandcamp, here’s one part textbook and another part love letter to its composition.