Aerofall are a band from the Russian port city of Rostov-on-Don who carve their own compelling niche on the ever-fertile line between noise experimentalism and dream pop.
Their guitars are tuneful, overdriven and anarchically feedback-drenched. Their exhilarating racket sounds like a less angsty Ice Age, The Jesus and Mary Chain without the snarl, A Place to Bury Strangers with much better song writing. They have a winning gift for off-kilter pop melodies, the vocals and bass lines often reminiscent of the propulsive wide-eyed coolness of The Breeders. Dusted in Bernard-Butler-in-a-blender guitar noise, their bubblegum pop comes in new and sophisticated flavours.
Aerofall’s sound taps into the spikey motorcycle emptiness of leather-clad 80s bands like The Mighty Lemon Drops or even U2, but their Wall-of-Death of sound cascades inwards, revving through thick layers of shoegazy fog. Like the sprawling bogginess of Sonic Youth, their hard core is blurred and sensitive around the edges.
About two-thirds of the way in, for a couple of songs their self-titled new album threatens to stray into bland female-fronted noisepop territory. Even then, though, you only need to focus your attention on the guitars to find pockets of fascinating sonorities to drown in. Thankfully, the record soon returns to its more abstract, dense and gloriously expansive sugar-coated soundscapes, culminating in the beautiful fractured drone of “Hidden Track”.