Photo by Samuel David Katz

Forget the never-ending shoegaze discourse for a minute. Forget its current trends, and forget the fact that there are a million bands right now trying to do something different with the sound while sounding almost entirely the same. For Sparkler, the San Diego band’s sound isn’t anything but a transcendental experience which exists outside of all that gossamer matter within its spectrum, and on their debut album, Glidewinder, they’re offering you the antidote from the need to define what it is beyond how it makes you feel.

Since forming its core in 2020, founding members in co-vocalists and guitarists Ashley “Tron” Castillo” and Chris Sennes — who have since expanded to a four-piece including bassist Amelia Sarkisian and drummer Ian Marshall — have been refining what that can be through a micro-detailed soundscape of moving wavelengths that wash through you like a musical white noise machine that instill a palatial calmness that softly reverberates throughout the sensory system. They call it “truegaze.” It’s a sonic wonder in synesthesia no matter what you want to refer to it as.

But about the word “truegaze” — +rcmndedlisten was curious to hear more about that, so across electronic mail, Chris Sennes expounded on that thought as well as talked about how the creation of Glidewinder is about more than just guitar loops and distortion pedals, the pursuit of the “pink cloud” feeling in recovery and their music, and potentially pulling their own Pygmalion in the future.

You coyly refer to your sound as “truegaze.” I did an interview last year with your fellow Californian and labelmate, Welcome Strawberry, where I similarly referred to it as “shoegaze purity.” How would you describe this to somebody who has literally never listened to a shoegaze album in their entire life?

Chris Sennes: I would most likely describe it as music made through experimentation of effects to create a sonic atmosphere that almost feels as if it engulfs the listener in a (hopefully) comforting way that ebbs and flows. 

+rl: All of this is made more curious, considering: Chain links on cymbals. Banging on coconut shells with skateboard wheels. Plenty of effect pedals fucked around with in every which direction. This has the makings of an avant-noise record, but instead, it’s your second LP, Glidewinder, one of the year’s most beautifully soundscaped releases that refines upon your 2023 debut, Big Sonic Chill, in being dense in lush detail, loud while maintaining a delicate psychedelic nature, and one that — like the album’s title — careens aerodynamically. How did these experimental elements come about in the studio? 

CS: We had a rough idea of what we wanted to achieve and then wanted to build on top of it naturally during the recording process. We had plenty of resources at our disposal to use and wanted to utilize whatever we could that would add subtle, or not so subtle, nuances. The chain links created a super abrasive sound that was used as accent crashes in a song or two. We also wanted a hand drum type percussion sound on “Slowerratic” and experimented with different mallets, but a urethane skateboard wheel just sounded the most pleasing.

Amelia, who is now our current bassist, is the engineer on Glidewinder and is very much into exploring every avenue possible to achieve something we are all excited about. She encouraged a lot of the experimentation and there was a lot of looping guitar parts and then slamming them through all of our pedalboards linked together. From there, we just recorded anything and everything and got a lot of sounds and samples that were used in songs or for the interludes between songs. Amelia was very conducive to the experimentation portion of the record and encouraged us to use everything at our disposal.

+rl: There’s very much an acknowledgment in your music to the genre’s origins with bands like My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive, but when framed in modernity, it’s also feels like there’s an iridescent quality to your sound that’s less murk and dissolve and more atmospheric shimmer in its celestial burn that clears the clouds wide open on highlights like “Last Left” and “Come Today”. What inspires your artistic mood board when you’re creating these textures?

CS: I think we want to create something that is more uplifting and it reflects. There is a lot of doom and gloom in a lot of music, especially in shoegaze, that embraces the dark and heavy and we want to do something that’s more hopeful.

I think you put it into words nicely with “a celestial burn that clears the clouds wide open.” Prior to Sparkler I struggled with addiction and mental health and went to treatment and have been in recovery for a long time now. In the early days of recovery, it is described as a “pink cloud” type state, where everything has lifted and your happy brain chemicals start to produce naturally at levels you are not previously accustomed to. So going into recovery, I wanted to skew from the heavy shoegaze path and create a new project that was more representative of that “pink cloud” feeling.

I want to play music that makes me, and hopefully others, feel hopeful and happy through dark periods. Boiled down, it’s music I want to hear that makes me feel good and happy when I am writing and performing, and if that resonates with others, then that makes me even happier.

+rl: Sparkler in itself came from the dissolution of the band Hug, which leaned more into the testosterone-fueled, heavier, grunge-adjacent side of the spectrum that seems to have whelmed the scene over the last couple years. There’s very much no shortage of shoegaze revival acts out there, at that. Some might find this oversaturation boring, but I personally think if it spawn a strange outlier like a Pygmalion, it’s interesting to see play out. Where do you want to see Sparkler evolve?

CS: I briefly touched on the dissolution of Hug and birth of Sparkler in my previous answer. That entire hemisphere of the genre just was not for me at the time and I no longer connected with it. I can see why the oversaturation and derivative nature of the genre can become boring in every corner of the genre, but Sparkler was a natural evolution for me and the headspace I was in at the time.

I actually think Pygmalion is crazy underrated and may be finally getting the credit it deserves. That record feels like something that they did for the love of the game and not just to put out another record that will sell well. We recently collaborated on a couple songs with a friend who makes experimental, atmospheric, electronic music that is in the same vein as Pygmalion and we are excited to release those songs eventually.

As for future evolution of Sparkler, there are about 4 to 5 songs ready to evolve into the next release. The songs seem to be a little more on the pop side, but still very much Sparkler. We just want to keep writing and experimenting, this genre is all I have ever written so it may not stray too far from the source.

Sparkler’s Glidewinder is available now on à La Carte Records.