My Violent Ego
One Day You'll Laugh at The Sad Saga That Was....

3
...according to our Mike on 18 May 2011.

Well, this is a very pleasant CD. It's a collection of warm and immersive shoegaze from a Scot and an Italian who met on the internet and started exchanging recordings a decade ago. They released an album in 2003 and appear to have a new one in the works, but for now they're reminding us of their existence with this odds-and-sods collection of unreleased recordings and cuts from various EPs which were previously only available in very scarce quantities or as download-only releases. This is pretty slow-paced, and generally based around violin, delay-drenched guitar and female vocals. Some of the songs have beats, some just drift by under their own steam. This is definitely a shoegaze record in essence but it's not got that propulsive feel to it that you might expect; there's elements of drone and slowcore, it even has shades of trip-hop in places to my ears. When a groove does turn up, as late as the 13th track, 'La C'est La Voix', it certainly is welcome, with sweeping strings and fingerpicked guitar venturing into Morricone territory while the ethereal vocals keep it from sounding too much like something from an entirely different record. In fact, a few of these songs later on have more of this post-rock feel, much more of an indie rock take on shoegaze instead of the dreamy ambient angle. At their best moments they have a real insidious intensity to them that really catches you off guard, as the textures pile up around one another until you're being swept along by all these dense, milky tones.

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Sound clips for One Day You'll Laugh at The Sad Saga That Was.... by My Violent Ego: on CD at Norman Records UK. CD, White Birch/Handwriting, HW003/WB001, £11.99.

What their label says...

My Violent Ego are back after 8 years with a new record which collects their EPs produced before and after "Carried-Along-By-Fate", full-lenght album dated 2003, released via the French label Ocean-Music. 

Fully remastered in 2010/2011, "One day you'll laugh at the sad saga That Was" contains a selection of tracks from Lìtost EP, Feel Yr Sleep EP (2001), Rejected by Fate EP (2003), and the collection of demos that was released in 2005 in internet under the title of Clicks & Hisses

Tracklisting:

Clicks & Hisses EP:
1. Plam 02:54
2. Swoonow 02:17
3. Go bed 01:08
4. Come on, sleep 02:51
5. Crawling 01:20
6. Saint My-self 02:00
7. What if She leaves 02:36
8. Well, she left 03:36
9. Pesky fly 03:07

Unreleased:
10. A loop in yr garden 02:16

Rejected by fate EP:
11. Sleeping song 02:18
12. French feeling of a tragic song (vers. 2) 02:18

Unreleased:
13. Là c'est la voix 03:24

Feel Yr Sleep EP:
14. Untitled, uncomplete 01:58
15. Plom 04:38
16. ALTHOUGH THANKS FOR WASTING MY TIME 01:48
17. Slow motion into sound (my head exploding) 02:16

Litost EP:
18. Enraptured 02:31
19. Loop yr self 01:46
20. Trail of light (stellar version) 03:49
21. Plom (early demo) 04:40

Unreleased:
22. Small consolations 04:25