Eviscerating with They Are Gutting A Body Of Water

Discover Blogly is The FADER’s curated roundup of our favorite new music discoveries.

Speaking about the jagged and elusive music he makes in an interview last year, Douglas Dulgarian said his mind is focused "constantly [on] whatever feels right in the moment.” The present moment, he explains, is the key: “I basically just decide what I’m into in the moment."

Since 2018 They Are Gutting A Body Of Water (which Dulgarian started as a solo project in Philadelphia and is now a fully fleshed out band) have utilized this embrace of the moment across three albums of experimental guitar music that takes the classic shoegaze sound as its home base and the blends it with samples, digital noise, and unexpected left turns. One of their songs features a text notification sound buried beneath its roaring, amp-testing exterior. On another, “violence ii,” Dulgarian asks "are you adjusted to the dark?" Their darkness may take a little time to get used to, but the immersive world they have created is utterly enthralling.

These albums make them a key part of the new wave of shoegaze alongside their peers in Full Body 2, Spirit of the Beehive, and Hotline TNT. Dulgarian is also the founder of Julia’s War, a label that has released early projects from Wednesday, Feeble Little Horse, and Glixen as well as collaborating with Jane Remover on Census Designated, a 2023 album that forged a path between shoegaze and digicore. Dulgarian’s philosophy of pursuing “what feels right in the moment” has inarguably helped shape the sound of indie rock music right now.

Quietly operating ahead of the curve is the TAGABOW way; it’s what makes swanlike (loosies 2020-2023), released earlier this summer, such an intriguing artifact. Like the band’s previous albums (2018’s gestures been, the following year’s Destiny XL, and s from 2022) is a collage of different sounds and genre experiments. But this project, an archive of SoundCloud and YouTube rarities, has a looseness relative to band’s discography. While some artists' discarded tracks feel like scraps or fodder for completists only, swanlike offers a blueprint for any indie rock band hoping to do more than just genre revivalism.

Song titles are less considered than they might be on a finished album (or, in the case of “Fight At A Kegger In The Woods And Everyone Is Shining Their Phone Lights Into The Carnage And Screaming,” perhaps more) but every moment bristles with fun and a sense of possibility. “Beautysleep'' is reminiscent of Greg Mendez, another of Dulgarian’s collaborators, in its mix of maudlin introspection and haunting melody, morphing midway through from an acoustic emo ballad into something sharper and harder to grasp. “T Gap Mindfilm,” one of the oldest songs on the album, uses pitch-shifted vocals and blown-out production to turn itself into an alluringly alien form. And the straight-faced covers of both the Degrassi and Dawson’s Creek theme tunes increase the feeling of having stumbled upon the entire project via an illicit WeTransfer link.

Many of the 22 tracks on the album are demos of beats, riffs, and guitar loops that utilize breakbeats and other club music tools. “Elysian fields” sounds like bouncing off the walls in a neon-spattered games arcade while “Heavy Vegetable,” feels closer to Aphex Twin than you’d expect from a band tagged with having helped revive shoegaze. One track, titled “clit Eastwood,” is a straight up drum ‘n bass tune. It’s in the moments that swanlike feels the most alive as it offers a window into the masks and costumes the band have been trying on over the years, some you can trace through to their ‘proper’ albums and some that were clearly just fun times in the studio. It’s unclear where TAGABOW will go next; perhaps this marks the cleaning of the slate, but whatever follows is sure to be similarly overwhelming, chaotic, and beautiful.