Luster Blend Shoegaze with ’90s Club Music on New Track “All of a Sudden”

The LA-based outfit’s sophomore EP Dopamine Loop is out April 21 via Funeral Party Records.
First Listen

Luster Blend Shoegaze with ’90s Club Music on New Track “All of a Sudden”

The LA-based outfit’s sophomore EP Dopamine Loop is out April 21 via Funeral Party Records.

Words: Mike LeSuer

Photo: AJ Wilson

April 10, 2023

Remaining unique amidst an endless tide of new artists embracing the latest wave of shoegaze revivalism, the music Adrian Castillo and Alvin Carillo create as Luster stands out with its embrace of another staple of ’90s music subculture: house music. While the energy of their forthcoming EP Dopamine Loop leans further into the former genre’s gloomy aesthetic (it was procuded by Nick Bassett, formerly of Nothing and Deafheaven), live percussion is replaced on these six tracks with a thumping, trance-y electronic beat.

Following the anchoring title track and hazy “Thorn in Yr Kiss,” the band is sharing third single “All of a Sudden” today, which features a more skittering breakbeat than the steady industrial pulse of “Dopamine Loop,” which initially aligned the release with the recent output of A Place to Bury Strangers. The new track has a more introspective bent, as heard in its confessional lyrics and the nostalgia behind them. “‘All of a Sudden’ is a nod to the generation of Chicanos who grew up listening to English ballads and love songs in Spanish while driving around with their guardians,” Castillo shares. “The ’90s were an eclectic time in music for all of us who grew up in America with our families from Latin America.”

Hear the track below.