Hey there!
I'm creating this blog to talk about my music and music in general, focusing especially on shoegaze, post-punk and modern alternative rock.
Let's start out talking about how my music project DKANDLE came to be.
Allora... My hometown is Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). I've been living in Tuscany, Italy, since 2018, in a town near Florence. When the lockdown came in 2020, I found out I that had skin cancer. I had a biopsy and fortunately no metastases were found. The surgery to remove the tumor was a success, but even so I will have to have regular exams for the rest of my life because it is possible that a new tumor will appear. Anyway... This surgery really changed me, I started to have new types of thoughts and behaviors that made me want to go in a direction that I did not glimpse before the surgery. By this, I mean that my music used to be more harsh, but now I wanted to make a more atmospheric, trippy kind of music, but still being heavy... I wanted to get rid of that musical aggressiveness of the past, especially in the vocals. That is why I currently produce music influenced by shoegaze.
I have been into shoegaze since 1992. I discovered the style when I saw the video clip of Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine on MTV:
I was stunned when I watched it for the first time. And I didn't even smoke at the time! haha. I thought it was just great. What a beautiful noise... It sounded different from all the grunge stuff from that time. I was 17 years old. It was right around the time Nirvana released Smells Like Teen Spirit. These two clips, along with Head Like a Hole by Nine Inch Nails, are my musical trinity. Before, the heavier side would come out. I had my grunge and industrial phases, but always with shoegaze in the background. And now I've taken a shift in that: shoegaze has come to the forefront, while grunge and industrial have gone to the back - they are still there, but now they are in the background.
Why didn't I embrace shoegaze as the main influence right away, and only now it is guiding my music? Well, at that time, in 1992, came the grunge wave and all kinds of heavy music associated with it, such as industrial, and coupled with the fact that shoegaze bands were drowned out in the press and on MTV by grunge and britpop, plus the fact that it was the pre-internet era, where in Brazil you relied on MTV and imported music magazines to discover new music, so I ended up focusing more on the heavy, aggressive sounding bands that were excelling at the time, but I never stopped liking shoegaze.
Until, in the late '00s, I discovered the band Fleeting Joys, and through them I found out that there was a shoegaze revival going on. Since then it has become my favorite genre:
Back to the issue of my surgery: I kind of became more sensitive to life, and wanted to start making a kind of music that had more to do with what I was/am currently living. I decided to make music inspired by the genre I like the most. Then the DKANDLE project was created. I wanted to invest in new pedals, in creating new kinds of sound, and I wanted to start singing in a more smooth way. My current criteria is that if I have to push myself to sing, then it is no good... I just want to sing in a way that I don't have to squirm. And this is so comforting, because singing for me has become even more enjoyable, and this "softer" way of singing actually makes it seem that I am actually... softer. So it's all about the current Denis Kandle. :)
And how was the first song under the name DKANDLE born? Well, in early 2021, I received an invitation from Mario Bros to do a remix for a song from his band Wry. I had already done an electronic remix for them before, for the song 'Come and Fall', under my electronic project Aliencore. This time I decided to do a shoegaze remix, and that was the basis for the song. Only they were looking for an electronic remix, without guitars. But I thought the song was really cool! It was my first shoegaze, and after I wrote it, I saw that I could - and should! - write more songs inspired by this style. So I put a new vocal over the instrumental, and that's where Flame, the first track on DKANDLE, was born.
In the following months I wrote seven more new songs, and also used of an old one from my old rock band Pregnant Felix that had never been released and had a shoegazy feel (Trans-Spirited). In the end, I wrote and produced 9 tracks, which will be part of the album Mondano, which will be released on September 23rd, 2022.
I don't really know if the genre of DKANDLE is shoegaze, I just know that I am very inspired by it. Maybe the genre that best describes DKANDLE's music is Post-Shoegaze. There are a lot of overdrive and fuzz, with the vocals going in the "whispered" direction, and a lot of effects on both the guitar and vocals. I would say that DKANDLE sounds like "My Bloody Valentine meets Nirvana". This is a description that might give you an idea of DKANDLE's music if you haven't heard it yet. But once you get to know the sound in depth, you will see that there are many other strong influences contained in DKANDLE's sound, not only shoegaze and grunge, but also post-punk, industrial, ethereal wave and other types of alternative rock. As examples of other bands that are great influences for DKANDLE's sound, I can mention A Place To Bury Strangers, The Telescopes, Ringo Deathstarr, The Jesus and Mary Chains, White Hex, SQÜRL and Dead Can Dance.
And why will the name of the debut album be Mondano? It means 'worldly' in Italian. It is a tribute to the lifestyle I chose to have, that of worldliness, in contrast to every attempt of religion and society's moralism to condemn the worldly lifestyle. I do not condemn this style, on the contrary, I celebrate the fact that I am mondano... As Proust shows in his book In Search of Lost Time, where the main character discovers his vocation and life fulfillment not in asceticism, but in worldliness. I also think that it is by enjoying the world that we grow spiritually. With all the pains and delights of this planet - this is how we enjoy life to the fullest. Asceticism is for the weak and repressed. Life is too short to be spent without pleasures. Enjoy your life, embrace all colors, learn from all experiences, live your worldliness to the fullest!
And to help you enjoy your worldliness, enjoy my debut single Flame. ;-)
The single was mastered by Kenneth Estrada, who has a great YouTube channel, Berlin Shoegazer, be sure to check it out!
So that's it, I will always post new stuff here, some related to new singles and albums releases, but I will be mostly talking about music I like, new bands that I discovered, so come back often!
Do you have any questions or comments about DKANDLE? Comment below, I'd love to hear from you!
Baci