DAYZED - Wake Up The Sun LP (colour vinyl)

Limited edition of 100 copies on clear vinyl.

Highly recommended.

"Dayzed occupy that nebulous ridge between the soporific blur of shoegaze, and the more hard-lined groove of alternative-rock. Wake Up The Sun evokes the vastness and brightness of open-air, of driving a steering wheel too hot to touch, and of solitude that’s both heavy and necessary. Dayzed is sensitive to pace—these 9 songs follow a steadiness akin to more satisfying experiences of time; hours that feel deep and rolling. But as any solid debut should, it senses when to veer around, contract and spangle out.

Written and recorded across a number of sharehouses from 2018-2021, for Josh Prendergast, Dayzed has always been a kind of spiritual oasis. This record captures the sensations of Josh’s youth around the Victorian Coast, and his love for dream pop’s luminaries. DIIV is perhaps the most felt influence within Dayzed’s oeuvre, but it’s Josh’s ability to freewheel within the scope of this inspiration that makes this collection a standalone work. These songs mark an inaugural collaboration for Dayzed. Having traditionally written alone, Josh invited Tinieka Page to contribute vocals, lyrics and basslines. This creative partnership imbues an air of balance and warmth across the record.

Wake Up The Sun shimmers with the kind of confidence that’s hard to emulate - calm, clear-eyed assurance. The album’s second track, ‘Tidal Gaze’ (a fitting name for a song that feels like an unwavering, slowly-rising vision) exhibits this kind of deceptive nonchalance. Colours and tones evolve and shift with the same unhurried quality of Josh’s vocals across the LP. The album snakes between phantasmic, shadowy moods that appear on ‘Now You Know’ and ‘On The Run’ - both reminiscent of a night time desert montage - to the frothy, luminous sprawlings on ‘Quicksand’ and ‘Sometimes’. To listen to Wake Up The Sun is to peer in and out of stained glass; music that is fugue, and equally, lucidity." - Jess Zanoni