Airiel

Since the late 1990s, Chicago’s Airiel has built a modest yet devoted audience with its expansive, melancholic strain of dream pop. The group’s dense layers of effects-laden guitars and plaintive singing evoke the atmospheric U.K. shoegaze of Kitchens of Distinction and Ride alongside the melodic indie-rock approach of American songwriter Bob Mould. After issuing four Winks & Kisses EPs across 2003 and 2004, the band returned at irregular intervals with the full-lengths The Battle of Sealand in 2007 and Molten Young Lovers in 2017, along with assorted singles. In 2023 a remastered, expanded edition of Winks & Kisses marked the project’s twentieth anniversary.

Guitarist and vocalist Jeremy Wrenn, previously a member of shoegaze outfit Black Olive, established Airiel Project One in Bloomington, Indiana during 1997. A 1998 split EP with the Sunflower Conspiracy prompted the shortening of the name to Airiel, after which Roisin Recordings issued the debut 7-inch “Shirley Temple Tidal Wave.” Once the band had settled in Chicago, occasional compilation appearances and the limited giveaway CD-R EP Christmas Colors in 2002 marked the next several years, yet no official Airiel recordings appeared until the launch of the Winks & Kisses EP series in 2003. Each installment contained one extended track nearing or surpassing ten minutes; Clairecords released the four EPs individually between July 2003 and June 2004 before issuing them together as a limited-edition CD box set later that year.

Sonicbaby Records put out a self-titled EP in 2005, supporting a tour along America’s East Coast. The Battle of Sealand, Airiel’s first album, followed on Highwheel Records in 2007. Recorded by Wrenn, guitarist Chris DeBrizzio, bassist/vocalist Cory Osborne, and drummer John Rungger, the set included a guest contribution from electro-shoegaze producer Ulrich Schnauss, who supplied skittery beats for “Sugar Crystals.” Airiel joined Schnauss for European dates in 2008, by which time Osborne and Rungger had already departed.

The Kid Games EP surfaced on Shelflife Records in 2012, performed by Wrenn together with Andrew Marrah and Chase Johnson and emphasizing a stronger synth presence than earlier material. A triple-LP edition of Winks & Kisses appeared in 2015, augmented by three newly commissioned remixes. The 2016 single “Cloudburst” led into the second album, Molten Young Lovers, released in 2017 with Wrenn, Marrah, bassist Matt Blanton, and drummer Spencer Kiss comprising the lineup. Reduced to the core of Wrenn and Marrah, the band issued the single “Bloom” in 2020. Responding to longstanding interest, the 2023 twentieth-anniversary deluxe reissue of Winks & Kisses incorporated early demos reaching back to the group’s 1997 origins and several previously unheard tracks.