I found it a bit difficult warming up to last year’s debut LP by this group featuring, among others, Chris Natividad of Marbled Eye and Public Interest, as that record still struck as a bit too glassy, overindulgent and underdeveloped, severely lacking in direction and contour in an era where that’s kinda symptomatic of the sad state the current wave of shoegaze-y groups is operating in. Well, i can’t say that about their newest EP though, on which they’ve considerably sharpened the edges and reinforced the structural integrity of their compositions. Did i just say Shoegaze? Yeah that’s right! There’s relatively little in common here sound-wise with the slightly ethereal, dreamy post punk of the aforementioned groups. Rather, Blue Zero are distinctly channeling a certain strain from the more straightforward and direct edges of the old-timey Shoegaze spectrum with the likes of Swervedriver, Bailterspace, Pale Saints and early Ride springing to mind immediately.
