Blue Ocean announce self-titled album

Blue Ocean cover artwork

A swirling haze of sound glazes over dreamy pop songs, leaving a shimmering electric roar with a slight grin. The Oakland, CA duo Blue Ocean play with shoegaze & noise pop to make a sound that is somewhere between My Bloody Valentine’s You Made Me Realise era and C86 jangle – but with repetitive motorik drumming. The band have announced their self-titled album.

Blue Ocean are Rick Altieri and David Stringi; long-time friends and former bandmates from the Boston acid punk band Puke, now reunited in Oakland. The ‘Blue Ocean’ tape compiles their two most recent EPs: ‘Summer Of Hands’ and ‘Fade’, mastered and cleaned up by Mikey Young. 

‘Blue Ocean’ track list

Side A
1. Summer Of Hands
2. Love
3. Human Now
4. Maggie’s Bind

Side B
1. Arnold & Thom
2. Emporium
3. Dwell
4. Elude
5. Lava

Stream ‘Blue Ocean’ via Bandcamp.

Blue Ocean cassette

Pre-order the ‘Blue Ocean’ tape, limited to 100 goldenrod yellow cassette tapes, duplicated by National Audio Company.

The two have been making “two chord pop with layers of swirling noise and synth pads, backed by a pulsing drum machine” for the last couple of years. I only saw them once at Hit Factory Pop City, the benefit show for Hit Gallery in San Francisco. They opened the benefit (of 8+ bands) under a “mess of cables” and hissing distortion, played their wobbling version of pop.

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