Channel One - "Permissions" EP

Channel One - These Roads (Sound Foundation 2007)

Channel One - Permissions EP / Sound Foundation

I spent a lot of this past weekend immersed in M83's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts. I don't know what it was that set me off on it - maybe I was in the mood for something dramatic or maybe I wanted to revisit one of my favorite albums or maybe I was trying to erase the memory of that new Smashing Pumpkins track "Tarantula" - but I listened over and over before I went to bed. It was refreshing to revisit.

There are a lot of times that I miss shoegaze, bluntly. So much gets talked about Ride or Loveless or Slowdive as influences that it's increasingly rare to find someone who's actually taken the time to listen to Moose or who knows which band produced Blood Music (Answer: Chapterhouse). The truth is, a decent quantity of those albums from Glider to Pygmalion were pretty mediocre. Still we talk of that period in the superlative... And yet, here we are in 2007 with one of the best years for shoegaze and all things related: Cyann & Ben, A Sunny Day in Glasgow, The Twilight Sad if you want to count them... And joining the fray is a little group from Dublin, Ireland known as Channel One. This EP is just their first release, but already they've skipped the whole Isn't Anything stage of Valentine obsession and gone right to the end of Loveless when critics and fans alike were left wondering where the hell you could go after perfection.

Dance music has been one suggestion propagated by critics fascinated by the trance that tracks like "To Here Knows When" or "Soon" suggested. Granted, that's a product of time and place; after all, Brits were just emerging from their late-80s rave hangovers and it wouldn't be long before The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers would be everywhere... But Channel One seem to have heard the same strand of musical DNA as the critics. Now they're walking onto the world stage with it, having recently opened up for CSS on a few UK dates. In contrast to Anthony Gonzalez's all-synth approach (which substitutes them for guitars rather than just beats), Channel One uses guitars but limits the electronics to tastefully intruding loops pre-programmed for maximum pleasure.

"Rhythm and Purpose" doesn't start off with wicked guitar white-noise. Instead, it starts off with subdued keys that then kick in full blast with the band using a 0111010110 skittering synth suggesting malfunction with the melody. Of course, it's repeated throughout the song as guitars rush in and out and the band does its best to make the vocals as indistinguishable from every other shoegaze ripoff out there. Too bad their natural knack for songwriting and the power of the music is just too strong.

The more I listen to this, the more I'm reminded of M83 meeting the Junior Boys. In a way, that's how I'd describe their sound best (though "These Roads" starts out like a Talking Heads b-side). The vocals are breathy and light while the music occasionally has a flair for the dramatic: "Beneath a Field of Steel" is a good example of this, but all four songs have both technological touches and emotional flair that would do well both in a club and in your headphones.

This EP has been highly touted in Ireland for awhile and the release actually came out in late March, but with just nine songs officially to their credit in three releases, Channel One is already drawing some steady support and a decent following. Help them out, because with the promise they've shown in a couple of early singles and now this solid (but too short) EP, there's plenty of potential for this to be the Emerald Isle's best band. And anyway, I'd rather hear Channel One than Damien Rice any day.