Rose Haze Shares Sombre Shoegaze Single “Slow Decay”

The femme-led, Kate Ramsey-fronted shoegaze outfit Rose Haze’s new single “Slow Decay” is out today, April 14th. While Ramsey was at home visiting family in the Midwest, she felt called to work on a new tune while going through waves of nostalgia and deep reflection. She asked guitarist Ruben Gonzales to send her a few riffs, bass line, and drum beat. In her childhood bedroom, she wrote lyrics and synth parts around Gonzales’ parts and arranged a demo, which in its primitive form was much more ethereal and light.

When introduced to the rest of the band and taken to the stage, the track naturally morphed into a darker and heavier track falling somewhere between dream pop and doom. Bassist Yoko Miyakawa’s undeniable sense of pulse brings a grooving yet sludgy undertone that locks in with drummer Dustin Coker’s deep kick and snare combo creating a sonic structure very reminiscent of the Cocteau Twins.

“Slow Decay” is very much a shoegaze wall of sound cloaked in analog synth swells and sweeps, which is exactly what Gonzales and Ramsey do best over a rock-solid rhythm section. The lyrics tell a story of the cycle of life and death from the lens of Ramsey contemplating whether she would ever have children and the future of humanity as a species. It’s a song of hope despite fears of the slow decay of our planet.

Kate Ramsey is a well-travelled songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who expresses the oddities, woes, and euphorias of the human experience through her music. She paints unique arrangements of spacey vocals, synths, pianos, guitars, and harp onto moody sonic canvases. Kate collaborated with esteemed musicians Stan Smith and Lisa Bella Donna to record and perform Rose Haze’s first two albums, which embody a dark and driving vulnerable sensibility. Currently, she writes, records, and produces alongside lead guitarist Ruben Gonzales with just as much angst and a little less anguish. Idiosyncratic, honest, and unabashedly vulnerable, her presence both online and on stage is hers and hers alone.

Rose Haze “Slow Decay” single artwork