Belong are from an era of experimental shoegaze that sometimes gets lost in its timeline of history. It happened during the 2000s when independent rock music wasn’t as monochromatic as it is today, and even when bands were influenced by the past, they weren’t trying to merely replicate it. The decibel-obliterating static of A Place to Bury Strangers, the 8-bit dreams of the Depreciation Guild, the stonergaze surge of Serena-Maneesh, and the dystopian motorik assembly line of Belong all identified as a new wave of shoegaze revivalism that hindered on electronic music, but were distinguishable from one another. This makes the latter’s return with Realistic IX, the New Orleans’ duo of Michael Jones and Turk Dietrich’s first new album in 13 years, an anomaly amongst an entirely whole new generation of blissmakers. With the early highlight, “Souvenir, their sound is like baring witness to a grainy surveillance film capturing a ghost coming through the machine. Its soundscape is built around a head-whirring loop and synthesized mechanical construction where the voice buried beneath and bleeding out of them gives the figure shape. Like any spectral experience, “Souvenir” is a reminder of something passed stepping forth through barriers of time.

Belong’s Realistic IX will be released August 9th on kranky.