Spotlights

At Roadburn we like to push the envelope, and the 2018 edition of the festival is a celebration of bands creating music on their own terms, hence inviting Spotlights to play on Sunday, April 22.

Coming from the streets of Brooklyn, New York, Sarah and Mario Quintero, the pair at the core of this remarkable entity, don’t shy away from genre hopping, and capture a voice of their own by mainlining doom with shoegaze, pairing post rock to sludge, and forming a dreamy yet very melodic concoction. Think My Bloody Valentine embracing the Melvins, or Isis engaging the Smashing Pumpkins.

Spotlight’s music is atmospheric, ethereal and esoteric – or dare we say, even romantic – but at the same time rough, brutal and super heavy, though they lack aggression, which sets them apart from other bands who simply try to pummel with brute force. Instead, the band is letting those beautiful dreams out, like butterflies flying out of a smouldering wreckage.

After two records, 2016’s Tidal and 2017’s Seismic (this last one on Ipecac Recordings, as perfect a spiritual home for them as one could wish), Spotlights are capturing audiences with their emotional depth, and by the time they’ve finished with us at Roadburn, we’ll all have a really bad case of Spotlights (and no doubt love every minute of it!).