Looking At You From A Different Side
Revisiting "Iridescent" ten years later.
If you’re going to listen to this, play it on a good stereo and play it loud.
Ten years ago, in September 2014, we released Iridescent. The track was recorded, mixed and mastered by Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden in East Palo Alto, CA.
Linoleum Dream was often compared to Lush, who were without question our biggest influence. This made us an outlier in the nu-gaze scene at the time, since no other bands really sounded like them. I always had my Boss CE-2 chorus pedal turned on, as some of you can probably tell.
To honor the decennial of our only official release, I thought it would be cool to look back on the context that it emerged from, and share some previously untold band lore that listeners might find interesting, and perhaps even funny. Just to be clear, I am in no way trying to suggest that LD was a significant band in any regard. Anyway, before we get into 2014, let’s start at the beginning of all this.
The Attic Era
The origin of the band might surprise some people. Nathaniel and I actually met on our high school ultimate frisbee team. The only reason I was on the team was that I needed PE credits to graduate and it was the one sport where they’d take pretty much anyone. I ended up sidelined for most of the season with a bad case of the shin-splits, and retired with a stat line of one career goal. Anyway, at some point Nathaniel and I found out we both played guitar, and we decided to arrange a jam session. I brought my guitar and practice amp over to his house and we came up with some weird, dissonant post-metal-sounding chords and messed around with the main riff from “Heartbreaker” by Led Zeppelin a bunch. In fall 2011, when for whatever reason I felt the need to start a shoegaze band, he was the first guy I hit up, mainly because he was the only other musician I knew who wasn’t a hippie or a metalhead.
For the first couple years we practiced in the attic of Nathaniel’s house on Hillegass Avenue, overlooking Willard Park. To get into the attic you had to climb a ladder through a small trap door, which made bringing gear in and out really annoying. We actually had to use a winch to hoist guitar amps up into the attic. It would also get really stuffy in the summer, and if we ever opened the windows the neighbors would immediately complain about the noise. Berkeley may have embraced rock ‘n’ roll in the 60s, but by the 2010s it felt pretty unwelcome in the snobby neoliberal yoga stronghold the city had become. We weren’t even playing at an unreasonable volume.
When the band started out I was 18, in the midst of my first and last semester at San Francisco State University. Since my parents didn’t have any money to pay for on campus housing, I had to commute to Daly City from my dad’s apartment in Ivy Hill and then take the shuttle bus to school from the BART station. I spent this semester of long, lonely train rides listening to Psychocandy on my iPod nano while gazing out at the rows of pastel-colored houses along the tracks. Since I wasn’t living on campus and it took well over an hour to get home, I didn’t really have much time for socializing and didn’t end up making any friends. I also found my classes to be incredibly boring and low-quality. The following semester, I transferred to the iconically brutalist Laney College, which was about a 30 minute walk from my dad’s place and cost almost nothing to attend. I didn’t make any friends at Laney either, but I did accidentally get a job as a lighting/AV technician in the auditorium. Playing in bands was pretty much the only social life I had.
Freak Scene Just Can’t Believe Us
Linoleum Dream is usually associated with Oakland, and although I did live in Oakland the entire time I was in the band, and we did practice at Oakland Music Complex for a few months, we were really more of a Berkeley band. The thing is, with the exception of a moribund 924 Gilman, there was no underground punk/indie/DIY scene in Berkeley at the time; it was all in Oakland. Berkeley bands weren’t even a thing, so therefore we had to be an Oakland band for marketing purposes. But since we were actually based in Berkeley, and were just random local kids either fresh out of high school or still in high school, it was difficult for us to gain entry into the Oakland indie cool kids club. The fact that almost all of the people in that crowd were not from the area and had moved to Oakland because it was a trendy place to live or whatever definitely put a rift between us and them; we saw them as a bunch of cliquey, elitist, art school hipster gentrifiers, and they saw us as a bunch of weird dorks who weren’t cultured or “cool” enough. We were caught in this strange paradox of both hating these people and wanting to be them.
Our lack of connections in the local indie scene made it almost impossible for us to get any shows at first. The few gigs we did get during our first couple years were at places no one went to, or were on bills with completely random bands who did not match our vibe at all and drew the wrong kind of audience. Our first “show” was on Nathaniel’s front porch. We even took a gig playing at a laundromat. I wish I was joking. Most venues or people in “cool” local bands would flat out ignore our emails and Facebook messages about maybe putting something together.
In retrospect, not being able to get any real exposure during the first couple years or so was probably for the best, because we weren’t very good. We had some interesting ideas, but at the end of the day we were just kids who were still figuring out how to write songs. I had reluctantly taken up singing duties even though I could barely sing at the time, which I guess isn’t that big of a deal when it comes to shoegaze, but I felt like I was in over my head. It took us a while to actually develop a cohesive sound and put together a solid lineup that could nail the songs consistently.
Oddly enough, we did happen to have some good connections in Portland, Oregon and Olympia, Washington. In Spring 2014, after several months of striking out on getting any gigs in Oakland, we finally just said ”fuck it” and went up north. We were among the last bands to play at the legendary Dekum Manor in Portland before it burned down. This show (which happened to fall on Friday the 13th) might’ve gone well had it not been for some sort of graffiti-crew feud escalating into a massive brawl in front of the house right as the show was starting. Maybe like ten people stuck around to watch our set after this (so pretty much the other bands, the people that lived at the house, and their dog). The highlight of Portland for me was being introduced to this dirt-cheap 24 hour Mexican joint called Javier’s, which was sort of a punk Mecca. I was stoked to get my hands on some Rainier tall boys as well. The show in Olympia was also pretty low-turnout, and my friend who put it together forgot to collect any money at the door, so we were left covering our own gas to get back to California. I don’t think we made much of an impression on people in the Northwest or picked up any new fans, but it was still a fun weekend trip at least. Always nice to get out of Oakland for a couple days.
Into The Light
Shortly after the release of Iridescent (along with a couple “b-sides”) we were featured on some of the more prominent shoegaze websites and blogs and received some glowing reviews, which caused an abrupt spike in Bandcamp traffic. This came as a surprise to me, considering we had virtually no online following up until then. At one point I did some detective work and discovered that a bunch of people in Ukraine and Russia were illegally downloading our stuff off VK. Hats off to them honestly. This sudden interest in the band felt like a huge victory after nearly three years of failing to gain any traction whatsoever.
Our first high-profile gig finally came around in October 2014, when were asked to open for Flesh World at 1-2-3-4 Go! Records. The show had great turnout and we went over pretty well from what I could tell. I remember the sound guy was really stoked on our set. That same month we had another solid outing at Leo’s Music Club in Temescal supporting Ruby Fray from Austin, Texas, who were signed to K Records. Our final performance of the season was at Sub-Mission art space in San Francisco, with another local band called Clumsy Concentration. Their guitarist, Matt, who was maybe 16 or 17 at the time, was an early supporter of ours and had booked us a couple times. Really nice kid. After I moved away from the Bay I kind of forgot about him, until I found out that he had eventually gone on to become the guitarist for Caroline Polachek, which is pretty surreal to think about.
The Sauna Era
In fall 2014, we began rehearsing heavily to get ready to record our first full length album. At the time Nathaniel was living at Thorsen House on Piedmont Ave, and we were practicing in the basement. It was an absolutely beautiful wood-shingled craftsman style house, and the basement even came equipped with a sauna. I honestly don’t know if it gets any better than literally having a sauna in your practice space. It was like we’d already made it and were living the high life, completely bypassing the part where you actually put out hit records and get famous. I also really miss our coffee breaks at Caffe Strada.
Hanging out in that part of Berkeley in the autumn was a great time. Our drummer TJ was living at Kingman Hall in Northside, which had a rooftop patio with an amazing view of the bay from the Berkeley Hills. He also took me to a great party at Casa Zimbabwe once. In my view, the only useful metric by which to measure success is access to cool buildings. I don’t even care that LD never made it as a band, I just wish I could get on the rooftop at Kingman again. To a guy who grew up in a shitty two-bedroom apartment in Ivy Hill, it was pretty surreal.
Ballad Of The Band
As the date of the recording sessions drew near, the adrenaline was high and some tensions within the band began to emerge. Although I really liked Nathaniel, and he contributed some great guitar parts to the band, it had always been a tenuous alliance between us two. We were not completely on the same page artistically, and he was also never really a shoegaze guitarist. Plus he didn’t come from a punk background like I did, and lacked a natural feel for some of the more abrasive and visceral guitar parts I was writing.
The thing you have to understand is that I was taking sort of an auteur approach as leader of the band. I had formulated a vision in my head that I was hell-bent on realizing. During this period I was so obsessed with working on the material for the record that I would sometimes forget to eat or brush my teeth. I wanted the final say on any compositional decisions, and had a tendency to micromanage everyone else, which didn’t always go over well. I also felt like Nathaniel didn’t take the band seriously enough, and wasn’t giving it his best effort. To be fair, he had to prioritize his studies at UC Berkeley, and he probably felt like I was putting too much pressure on him. We were also having issues with our bassist being unreliable and difficult to communicate with, and Nathaniel had to step in to mediate when I threatened to fire him.
Another point of contention within the band around this time was the name Linoleum Dream. Let’s be honest, it’s a fucking stupid name. I forget who, but someone once told me it sounded like a prog-rock band name, which I can totally see. We stuck with it because we weren’t able to reach a consensus on anything else, although we came much closer to changing our name to “Sex Faucet” than I’d normally care to admit.
The Rivendell Sessions
For the recording of our first LP, we decided to hire Brian Tester, who had recently recorded a great local post-punk band called Silver Shadows. Brian clearly understood how to capture this kind of music, and was just a cool guy in general. He had also worked as a software engineer for Ableton, which kind of blew my mind.
The downside of working with him was that he didn’t actually own a recording studio. He had a day job at Rivendell Bicycle Works in Walnut Creek, and would record bands in the shop sometimes. This was tricky because he had to schedule things around their operating hours, and this led to some of the time we had booked with him getting unexpectedly cancelled. We ended up having only one day of studio time to lay down basic tracks for eight songs, which really heightened the pressure we were under.
In January 2015, the crucial moment finally arrived. The recording session at Rivendell was some of the most intensive and demanding work I’ve ever done in a single day. We were rushing to get as much done as possible, but it seemed like we got some good takes from what I could tell, and I was excited to hear the rough mixes and see what edits and overdubs we needed to do. Unfortunately, once I got the basic tracks from Brian I immediately noticed some serious problems. I don’t want to single anybody out, but some of the parts were unusable. This was a huge disappointment, considering we had been totally locked in at practice and it seemed like we were poised to nail the songs in the studio. I did actually re-record some of the parts myself, but we were never able to finish the album. There were too many logistical hurdles and financial constraints that would’ve made it very difficult to book the additional studio time we needed, plus I didn’t feel like Nathaniel and I could continue working together, and I think we were just drained and exhausted by the whole experience. Honestly, the fact that we had even made it this far was remarkable.
Some of the unfinished material from the Sauna Era and Rivendell Sessions can be heard on Soundcloud:
A Complicated Game
There were a lot of really annoying things about trying to make this band work, but what wore me down the most over the years was the instability of our lineup. Nathaniel and I were the only long-term members. Due to our non-membership of the aforementioned hipster gentrifier cool kids club, we were basically forced to pick up the most random dudes off waivers to fill out the roster, some of whom were pretty rough.
Our drummer situation in particular was an absolute nightmare. It was so bad in fact, that at one point I seriously considered switching from guitar to drums myself. There was this one guy Nathaniel found somewhere who didn’t even know what shoegaze was. He had formal training as a jazz drummer and was really pompous about it, even though he sucked. On top of that, he was frequently late or absent from practice, and we noticed a pattern of him gradually speeding up the songs so that we’d end up finishing the song at 1.5x the starting tempo. He eventually confessed to us that he was addicted to crystal meth, which explained a lot. He also kind of had incel vibes. The most insane thing about this is that he was in the band for like a year. The only reason we didn’t kick him out sooner is that we literally didn’t know any other drummers who were available. I felt like such a loser being stuck in this situation while other people in bands were actually having fun.
The lowest point of this era for us was probably completely bombing our set opening for Whirr in 2013. Since our drummer hadn’t been showing up to practice lately, we were totally unprepared and freaking out. We were on the fence about dropping off the bill, but made the ill-fated eleventh hour decision to go ahead with it. When you open for the biggest shoegaze band west of the Mississippi and your drummer keeps coming in at the wrong time or stumbling through his fills because he’s been busy doing meth deals in a parking lot somewhere in Concord instead of coming to practice, and you end up looking like an absolute joke to everyone present, it leaves you with an enduring feeling of embarrassment. Fortunately, there weren’t very many people at this show because for some inexplicable reason the venue that was chosen was this DIY space called Terminal, which was way out in East Oakland and was more of a hangout for grumpy, pretentious, pseudo-occult industrial noise-dads than shoegaze kids.
This was not the only good opportunity we fumbled. We had to turn down at least a couple dozen shows either because we were underage and couldn’t play at bars, or because some of the guys in the band were just too irresponsible and flaky and the lineup kept collapsing. At one point this kid we had playing bass for us actually went to jail for drunkenly spray-painting “FULL COMMUNISM” and “KILL REGENTS” all over UC Berkeley, causing thousands of dollars worth of property damage (which I’ll admit I thought was kind of awesome at the time). This was ironic considering that the University was both effectively supplying us with a rehearsal space through Nathaniel’s residency at Thorsen House, and indirectly funding the band through my employment as a stagehand at Zellerbach Hall at the time. Fortunately they never made the connection.
During one show in 2012 were literally kicked off stage mid-set by the venue staff who somehow determined we were under age after we’d already begun playing. We got kicked out of another show at an art gallery in West Oakland in 2014 after a dispute over set times, which led to a row between our drunken fans and the promoters who refused to give them their money back. This sort of thing didn’t exactly help us make friends. Some people in the scene viewed us as immature, disrespectful and unprofessional, which I can’t say was entirely misplaced.
Anyway, after meth-guy finally got the boot in late 2013, Trevor DeSchryver, who was my roommate as well as my bandmate in Lycus at the time, unexpectedly volunteered for the role after I played him some of our demos. Having someone with a post-punk rhythmic sensibility behind the kit was a complete game-changer for us, and the band finally started sounding like it was supposed to. Trevor played on the Atomic Garden sessions, but he didn’t last long due to scheduling conflicts. I also don’t think he was thrilled about being in a completely unknown, inexperienced band with kids who weren’t even old enough to drink. Mind you, we’re talking about a guy who literally was in Deafheaven.
Eventually Trevor was replaced by a UC Berkeley student named TJ Banghart, who Nathaniel had met through some of his school friends. To this day, TJ remains my favorite drummer that I’ve ever worked with, mainly because he always unquestioningly did what I told him to do. There was a natural chemistry between my rhythm guitar playing and his drumming, he was able to quickly memorize the songs, he showed up to practice more than any of the other guys, and he was consistent. This took a lot of weight off my shoulders. I doubt he’ll ever read this, but in case he does I just want to emphasize how much I appreciate the work he put in.
The only problem with TJ was that he was a very smart dude and clearly had way better things to do than be in this band. In spring 2015, he graduated from UC Berkeley and suddenly went AWOL. For a while I couldn’t get a hold of him and had no idea where he was, but eventually I found out he’d moved to Texas for an archaeology internship or something. This effectively ended the band. The task of finding someone to replace him and go over all the material with again was just too daunting for me. I publicly announced our dissolution a few weeks later, and not long after this I packed up and left the Bay Area, eventually settling down in Hadley, Massachusetts.
Postscript: Does The Scene Still Celebrate Itself?
I didn’t realize this until years later, but if one or two things had played out just slightly differently, Linoleum Dream could’ve very plausibly ascended to the higher echelons of the 2010s Shoegaze revival. We had a lot of potential and were doing some interesting stuff, but were also an exceptionally dysfunctional and unlucky band. What it mostly comes down to is that we were just too young, and were in the wrong area. It’s a shame that we never got good recordings of our best material and never toured, which probably would have led to some really good opportunities for us. Ultimately, I’m kind of glad it didn’t turn out that way though, because I’ve come to realize that I do not have the personality or the social battery required to be a prominent, well-liked figure in the music scene. I also hear it’s lonely at the top.
To my amazement, shoegaze ended up becoming even more popular in the 2020s than it was during what I thought was the peak of it’s resurgence in the mid 2010s. A whole new generation of bands has emerged since LD split up in 2015, some of whom have actually broken the mold and taken the genre in interesting new directions. Pity we never managed to cash in on the trend, or leave much of a mark.
That concludes the story of Berkeley’s last rock band (and only shoegaze band). I’m not entirely sure why I felt the need to write this, but it was fun to revisit the glory days. If you made it to the end, thanks for reading. Strictly East Bay Sneaky Flute Music forever.
Dylan
One thing I neglected to mention - for a while, LD was using the name "Barn Burning", which I took from the Haruki Murakami short story of the same name.