Photo by newpleasure

Artist: Aluminum, the four-piece of vocalist, guitarist and sampler Marc Leyda, vocalist and bassist Ryann Gonsalves, guitarist Austin Montanari, and drummer Chris Natividad

Location: San Francisco, CA

Buzz: Following this past spring’s shoegaze-tangent watershed moment that was Nothing’s bi-coastal Slide Away fests, the scene’s new wave moves into its next phase, and Aluminum should be glimmering in that evolutionary story. The upstart Bay Area band is by no means appearing out of the blue, though, as it features scene vets Marc Leyda and Ryann Gonsalves, respectively of the departed underground rockers Wild Moth and Torrey, as well as Leyda’s previous Wild Moth bandmate Austin Montanari and Marbled Eye’s Chris Natividad. Past lives don’t explicitly shape their form regardless.

Breaking free from exacting angles, Aluminum are a band navigating fluidly through pop and post-modern alternative rock textures filled with hypnotic guitar ripples and sticky, liquid bass grooves, helium-rich synthesizers, and the snap of drum beats that ensnare a lush haze through finer point detail. On their debut full-length, Fully Beat, arriving at month’s end, Aluminum introduces their sound as one which filters the everyday malaise, mundane, and depletion from the capitalist grind through their sonic prism, creating a necessary reactionary resistance against these motions. They’re ensuring their internal energy doesn’t lose any touches of luster.

Sound: A coagulation of rainbow-swirled dream-pop and neo-psychedelic post-punk indebted to ’90s FM waves designed to fuel the brain and body with a constant serotonin drip throughout the workday.

Recommended: “Always Here, Never There”, “Behind My Mouth”, and “Beat” from their forthcoming debut LP, Fully Beat, and their 2022 EP, Windowpane

Directed by: Lauren R. Melton & AV Transit

Visualizer by: Marc Leyda

Aluminum’s Fully Beat will be released May 24th on Felte Records.