WHIRR 'WHIRR & LUSTER' EP Black Ice Blue Splatter Vinyl

LABEL: Free Whirl
RELEASE DATE: 09/18/2026
VARIANT: Black Ice w/Blue Splatter Vinyl EP

Two bands, four new songs. Whirr and Luster share a language of glide guitar, buried vocals and volume as emotion, and Nick Bassett produced and mixed most of Luster's earlier output, so the connection runs deep. The Whirr & Luster Split lands as a 12″ EP, a CD EP and digital via Free Whirl Records.

Whirr treat splits as sacred ground. More than a decade after helping define modern heavy shoegaze, the Bay Area five-piece returns with first new material in years. “Spiral Again” opens with an avalanche of guitar and a lyric about losing yourself in someone else's gravity. “Wish I Could Give You The World” follows, one of the most openly romantic songs they've recorded, all wildfire imagery and dizzy devotion at full volume. Whirr and Zac Montez produced both tracks.

Flipping the record, Los Angeles' Luster keep pushing the genre forward instead of reenacting it, folding electronic pulse and '90s texture into walls of glider guitar. “Against the World” plays like a love song as a locked door, claustrophobic and comforting at once. “Forever” shuts things down in a haze of doomed-romance repetition. Zac Montez produced these too.

Read as a conversation, the four songs circle distance, obsession and the ache of never giving someone enough, carried across two coasts and two generations of a genre that refuses to fade. Out September 18th.

TRACKLIST

Spiral Again
Wish I Could Give You The World
Against the World
Forever