Drone Dimension
Their album Faintly Acquainted is a thick and dreamy shoegaze gem that employs the style´s conventions without turning them into clichés; Drone Dimension moves around more, and experiences more catharsis, than your average band of My Bloody Valentine acolytes. Some of the subtleties may get lost in their loud-as-shit live wave of sound, but the outsize compulsion and whirlpool pull won´t. There are a lot of bands around here putting their own stamp on a lot of currently hip styles, and even more putting no individuality whatsoever into them, but not too many are turning to personal pre-Tech Age influences to help them produce great original songs. That doesn´t mean Drone Dimension (Jonathan Beadle, Rebecca Lima, Nikki Navarro and Bryan Thompson) are stuck in the past, however — they´re also part of a school of savvy underground acts as at home in the low-budget studio as they are on the dive-bar stage. Thanks to the Information Freaking Superhighway, more new fans are being introduced to local groups via recorded work than through shows, and Faintly Acquainted´s depthy, cannily constructed sound is an immediately infectious headphone trip.
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2004.