I first crossed paths with Iceblynk in a slightly roundabout way. I met Martin Newman at a Veldt show in Glasgow while he was playing with the band, and I got handed an Iceblynk CD to check out. Needless to say, I loved it. A little while later he sent BOAB my way, which made this one feel that wee bit more personal before I had even pressed play. Iceblynk have been on my radar for a while now, and one of the things I enjoy about following a band over several releases is hearing their musical vocabulary grow. The New York group began life in 2019 with Andrea Lynn on vocals, Martin Newman on guitar, and James Newman on bass, before Rachel Fischer joined on drums following the release of ‘Enter the Sky’. Since then they have continued to work around that meeting point between dream pop and shoegaze while gradually letting other sounds into the room. Their latest EP, BOAB, feels like another step in that process. Two Iceblynk songs occupy the first half, then two remixes take over and send familiar material somewhere else entirely. It gives these four tracks an unusual structure, almost two different sides of the same band packed into a relatively short running time.
Let’s hit play and see what this ones like.
If you have already heard Iceblynk, ‘Rememory’ feels like a very natural place to begin. It has been part of their live set for the past year, and you can understand why within seconds. A chiming guitar riff gives the opening an immediate lift while Lynn enters with that distinctive voice of hers. There’s this darker middle section which changes the temperature considerably. I love that passage. It gives the song a moody centre before the arrangement begins opening out again. The guitars and keys start circling one another and I can hear elements of The Cure and Slowdive in the way those textures meet. Iceblynk take those familiar ingredients and find their own balance.
That idea becomes much more pronounced on ‘Never Ready’. This song was retrieved from Iceblynk’s archives and reworked with a shoegaze and trip hop feel, which makes you wonder what the original version sounded like. The opening is gorgeous. Organ sounds arrive as though they are coming through an old timey radio, giving those first moments an eerie sense of nostalgia. Once the song begins filling out, that atmosphere remains. This is where the meeting of shoegaze and trip hop works especially well. Lynn sounds completely at home inside it, while Newman saves one of the track’s biggest moments for later. His guitar solo sends the closing section upwards and gives the arrangement a release after all that measured tension.
Then BOAB changes direction. The Summer Republic, a Brooklyn collective featuring members of Clone and The Veldt, take ‘Rememory’ and stretch it beyond six minutes for the ‘Total Recall Mix’. The synths move towards the front and a dancefloor beat replaces much of the original version’s guitar led momentum. What I enjoy here is the opportunity to hear how much the composition can withstand being rearranged.
Pablo Martin gets the final word with ‘Enter the Sky (Lulu Lewis Disco Mix)’, revisiting a song from an earlier point in Iceblynk’s story and pushing the electronic side of BOAB even further. Martin brings considerable remix experience to the job, and his version has a squelchy acid character running through it.
Iceblynk could easily have presented ‘Rememory’ and ‘Never Ready’ as two new songs and left things there. Instead, the remixes give the EP a second personality and place the band’s dream pop foundations alongside trip hop, synth music, disco and acid influenced electronics. These guys have a strong core identity, and the material here suggests they are increasingly interested in seeing how far that identity can stretch. For me, ‘Never Ready’ provides the most intriguing clue about where they might head next. That combination of shoegaze texture, trip hop rhythm, distant organ and Newman’s closing guitar work feels rich with possibilities. Then again, BOAB also makes a pretty convincing argument for leaving a few doors open and seeing who walks through them. Four tracks, several different versions of Iceblynk, and plenty to bring you back for another listen.
BOAB is out now. You can check it out over on the Iceblynk Bandcamp page.
You can follow Iceblynk on social media here…
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