progressive rock / post rock / experimental

Revolution is an album released in November 19, by Spanish post rock experimental project EXXASENS. A very interesting, dynamic and energetic album, that fluctuates over a variety of ecletic atmospheres, the versatility of this fantastic project is something almost out of reach. With a cohesive, solid musicality, and a proverbially clean style, Revolution reveals itself as a primordially graceful, effusive, pristine, elegant and very audacious work of art, that generates in the apex of its diluted style a proficient and sophisticated diagram of creative synergy, whose singular strenght is able to reach an extraordinary vortex of artistic splendor.  

Sixty-nine minutes long, the album has sixteen tracks: 1) Massachusetts; 2) A Space Odyssey; 3) Twenty One Years and One Day; 4) Revolution; 5) Why Not?; 6) Bye Bye Moscow; 7) Vega; 8) Eden; 9) Dream Is Over; 10) Another Space Odyssey; 11) Inside My Brain; 12) Since I Met You; 13) Eden's Place; 14) Dreams Are Over; 15) Autumn Storms; 16) Air; as a project that explores the overall density of a very proverbial and authorial musical proposal, EXXASENS does a surprising work on this fantastic album. With a cohesive, but at the same time easygoing style, a formidable creative horizon and exceedingly sober vocals — at least in some songs, the vast majority of the album is instrumental —, Revolution is a deeply pronounced ambitious album, that expands the creative formula of the artist's perception of sound.

With prog rock being the basis for the sound, the artist's style works from the musical conjuncture of this genre. Nevertheless, the marvelous atmosphere displayed by the harmonies conceives a serene universe of sound, whose magnificent technique anticipates the wonderful grandiosity of the project's somewhat innocent, but overwhelming artistic pretensions. The music is felt as simple, but splendorous at the same time; certainly, the diluted consecration of the formidable melodies that are poured through the edges of the sincere tones of the sound gets more and more rapturous, as the album progresses. 

Betting on a diversity of genres, letting the authenticity of his style reverberate over each one, the artist has crafted a formidably great, excellent and versatile musical universe, full of unexpected arrangements and colorful tonalities, that doesn't recognize boundaries nor limits for its fantastic creativity. The eleventh and fourteenth tracks — Inside My Brain and Dreams Are Over — are my favorites; the most beautiful songs in the album, in my opinion. 

A very interesting album, whose deeply authorial style and audacious experimental sensibilities captivates the listener already in the beginning, Revolution is a majestic work of art, whose gloriously creative ambitions make this work stand out for its ingeniousness and sonorous grace. Despite the fact that the album is a little too extensive — and invariably you become somewhat bored in the more repetitive passages —, the end result is fabulous, to say the least. Revolution manages to be a sensational musical experience, whose extraordinary creativity has definitely crafted a peculiar work of art, that deserves praise for all of its quintessential tenacious virtues.   


Wagner

industrial / darkwave / experimental / post punk

Cascades are falling down, a constant repetition of collapse. A motif found frequently in music, soundwise, in the lyrics or the music itself. Lots of artists from blackgaze to classical use it. Additionally it is found in visual arts or modern literature and over the last few decades has been connected to a critique of the present in order to change something about the future.

A new artist from Pennsylvania uses the image of collapse and a future uncertain combining it with a sonic landscape taking its bits from shoegaze and ambient, from noise and industrial. Lunacy‘s debut album Age of Truth (after releasing four EPs since 2016) is indeed a challenge to the ear but a very thoughtful one. The idea behind the record is obvious after a few seconds already because after a short lush intro the near-ambient mood is disrupted by harsh industrial marching drums. We are drawn into a world beyond Blade Runner and before Mad Max, a place where the constants of past, present and future might either still be possible or already obsolete.

The musician behind Lunacy tries to remain unknown (which can also be seen when looking at the record covers on which he becomes more and more of a blur). He does so not for his personal privacy but to render a blank canvas in order to give the listener the chance of projecting his own interpretations of and ideas about the music and the future, our planet and life in general – maybe even about the future of the future. What if our industry and society will collapse and with it the hope of changing the course of human (interference with) life on this planet? What will happen to “the future” if the end is coming, if the facades of humanity collapse and we will face the industrial downfall and machine-driven end?

Musically, Age of Truth combines his vision of a post-apocalyptic, post-human industrial age with
the help of Connor Clasen (IXVLF) recording the album and Oliver Ackermann (A Place to Bury
Strangers) mastering it. Sometimes you hear breakbeats, distorted vocal chants, shoegaze moments like that Ackermann is famous for. The foundation for this experimental electronica is a kind of 80s industrial soundtrack stemming from the use of synthesizers from that era which were then combined with several layers of guitars. Whether Lunacy is igniting a new phase of music-making for the first century after mankind or whether he is developing a new form of shoegaze is up to the listener, however it is clear that as an artist he achieved his vision clearly for the album transports us to a different place and time. Age of Truth will be released by Parisian label Third Coming Records on November 22nd


Thorsten

experimental / electronic / dark ambient / ambient / noise 

Nostalgie De La Boue

The world is all that is​.​.. is the most recent release by German electronic underground experimental noise artist Hans Castrup. With six tracks — The concept of sinking, Popular imagination, Full of used notes, Paradox difference, Clarification of geometry and Upon a hill —, on this work, like his previous albums, Hans continues to dive deep into a realm of lugubrious, melancholic and sinister sound experiences, where he clearly heads towards a stylistic direction of impious, responsive, nihilist and fatalist demise. Each and every album released by Hans Castrup seems to be the perfect soundtrack for a H.P. Lovecraft horror story. 

Already in the first track, the dense, epic and monumental The concept of sinking, we clearly see that the artist — deliberately or not — establishes his creative efforts towards a prominently dark ambient musical cosmogony. With pulsating, almost afflictive sonorous reverberations, the sensitive pluralism that emanates from the expansive and digressive agonies that subtlety comes out of these tracks certainly makes this album one of the darkest in the artist's discography. 

Nevertheless, there is also a lighter side in the music — albeit ostensibly dispersive —, that sounds as a more discreet, reasonable, proverbial uneasiness allocated in the background, that ocasionally flirts with our projective sensibilities, gracefully establishing an harmonious pattern that can be as decisively obscure as it is delightfully stimulating. 

The music gradually reveals itself as it is: as complex — in the darker depths of its relentless and dissolute darkness —, as it is majestically simple and objective, in the way it calmly delivers its pungent and uneventful dimension of poingnant mortality smoothly to the listener. Just as impressive is Hans' remarkable ability to progressively reinvent his music with more diluted elements, while never losing his virtuous and graceful sonorous identity. 

With the conception of an exceedingly dense, cohesive and robust musical atmosphere, it looks like Hans Castrup has crafted The world is all that is​.​.. as a pervasive parallel dimension destitute of acessible colorful sensibilities, whose mandatory elements are all indebted to a relentless and abrasive sonorous tissue, made entirely of an unforgiving, infinite and ruthless demise. 

As the perfect sonorous background for a surreal hallucinatory black and white alternate reality — like the ones shown in old sixties television anthology series like The Twilight Zone and One Step Beyond —, the music conceived on this marvelous album by Hans Castrup transports us to a whole different, more diluted, arbitrary and conspicuous diagram of existence, where the fugacious ephemeralities of life seems dormant, because they were never what they seemed to be, in the first place. 

Your sensitivities will be all confused, before they would be entirely configured in a completely different sonorous perception, diametrically opposite to what you had expected. In the end, The world is all that is​.​..  is a fantastic descent into a world of gloom, solitude and demise, without any possibilities to return. 


Wagner

progressive rock / post rock / experimental

bandcamp

Eðli. is an album released in October 11, by a French progressive rock virtuoso, under the alias of Ju. Sixty-six minutes long, the record has eleven tracks, whose titles have all the word Chapter into it, followed by the track order; for example, the first song is named Chapter One, the second song is named Chapter Two, the third song is named Chapter Three, and this goes on, until the last track, titled Last Chapter. A very intesting, colorful and serene musical work, the melodies are quite vigorous, and its renitent harmonious contrivances definitely highlight the superb creative abilities displayed by the artist. With simple, but profusely genuine authorial skills, Ju. manages to create a very decent, cohesive and dense album, that effectivelly satisfies all types of genre enthusiasts, from the more occasional to the more avid ones.  

With soft, serene lines of guitar, that develops the harmonies from the more pristine elements of its relentless solicitude, Eðli. reveals itself as a very diffusive work, whose dispersive melodies complement the beauty of its intrincate splendor with sensible majesty; though sometimes along the way, you may become a little exasperated by the despondent homogeneity of the style displayed by the artist, its general structure is cohesive, exceedingly concentrated, and delicately inserted into a sonorous vortex of sentimental magnificence. 

The delicacy of the artist's sonorous approach is very relevant for the creation of the diluted nature of his style. The uneasiness of all the majestic creative elements that circumnavigates the epicenter of the melodies floats towards the emotional sensitivities of the listener, that inadvertently absorbs the restless urgencies and the quiet resolutions that gravitates in between the external stimulus provided by the impredictable exhilarations of the sound and the sensational rapture that becomes invisible in the horizon of its dense expectations.  

Nevertheless, the guitar work displayed on this album is quite magnificent, and the diligent proficiency exhibited by the artist deserves praise. Ju. certainly knows how to conceive a marvelous sound, creating music that has soul, vigor and essence, being neither too technical nor too dispersive. The predominance of a salutary wave of calmness in the music — and yet, concomitantly, the vitality displayed by the guitar lines are quite resonant and resourceful — remains the basis of its splendorous and graceful strength. 

Unfortunately, the album has some monotonous passages, though in general, this doesn't compromise the spectacular degree of beauty and excellence displayed in the music. In fact, Eðli. is a very good album — that has an original, dense and intrincate musical layout —, that deserves to be highlighted, and mostly, widely appreciated. Undoubtedly, art rock and progressive rock enthusiats will find this album interesting, to say the least. Despite some minor stylistic limitations, Eðli. manages to be a relevant musical experience, that has all the necessary qualities to be classified as a marvelous work on its genre. 


Wagner

folk / experimental / classical

Another return to the impressive stable of Sound In Silence is 'Human, Insignificant' by Sweeney, the solo project of Jason Sweeney (Panoptique Electrical, Other People’s Children and Simpático). Sweeney has been making music for over twenty years, sometimes solo, sometimes with friends.

With this album, spanning around twenty-six minutes, Sweeney delivers eight emotional songs, all gritty, gloomy and accompanied with piano and soundscapes. The result is something so down to earth that you would think it's unearthly. It's folk, shoegaze and ballad pop, but most of all, it's an assault on your tear glands.

The eight songs here all seem to follow a similar path. In the back ground, you can find unidentified noises and soundscapes while the piano is set on "minimal". Then, Sweeney unleashes his fragile, emotional voice. His vocal style is something between singing and crying, which for some people will hit the exact right spot. For others, this might be a bit too intimate to enjoy to the fullest. For those, I will recommend the title track, which could be one of those illegal recordings of Elvis jamming solo on a drunk Sunday night.

In all, 'Human, Insignificant' is a daring album. It could be a big risk to bask in this melancholic sound because truth is, this is not a happy, joyful album. Yet, if you love what people like Luka Bloom do, plus love to dwell into gloomy classical music, this one will hit your right in the feels. Just listen to the alternative tear jerker 'Desire, Decayed' and you'll know what I mean. If you're in for a 26 minutes lasting emotional cleansing, this album is definitely a must-have...


​Serge

electronic / ambient / post rock

I know, I 'm getting behind on all the albums coming in to review. I'm afraid due to a whole number of different circumstances, some of those releases will eventually get lost in the pile but there are some beauties I definitely want to check out and recommend. Surely, I don't want to miss out on those amazing releases from Sound In Silence, which, throughout the years, have become one of my favorite labels. Their output has been one of an exceptionally high quality, not only because of their stable of talented artists but also because of the recognizable artwork and packaging. So, even though this album dates from July, I need to write about it.

Of course, Wil Bolton is no stranger to Merchants Of Air. For over fifteen years, Wil Bolton has been creating sonic works of art, mostly situated in the ambient scenes. 'Surface Reflections' is his glorious return to Sound In Silence, after the highly acclaimed album 'Whorl' in 2014. Once again, Bolton treats us to enigmatic pieces of music. There are five tracks on this album, good for forty-four minutes of soul warming ambient and blissful meditation. The album opens with the lingering 'Shrouded', which can best be described as a lengthy soundscape.

'In The Air Of The Morning' is a bit more playful but still remains on a gently, soft level. This one comes with an appropriate title as well. You can almost hear the city wake up. You can almost see men and women dragging themselves to their day jobs. In fact, this tune is where I decided to add "post rock" to the set of genres. Although you cannot compare this to bands like Explosions In The Sky or Mogwai, this music has a similar, narrative atmosphere in which you can easily loose your self into.

Even though it mostly follows its predecessors' example, 'Shallows' nudges more towards the noisier side of the ambient spectrum. It seems to drive on static noise, with vague samples and melodies interfering. Something similar can be said from the other tunes, with closer and title track 'Surface Reflections' being the absolute highlight. Soothing yet a tiny bit uneasy, calm yet somewhat impending. That is the music you can find on this excellent album. Ambient fans will know what to do...


​Serge

experimental / breakcore / electronic

The stubborn musical act Mathlovsky has  already dumped his second release, Phantoms, in our mailbox this year. This creative artist from Ghent Belgium is also the drummer of the black/post metal trio Kuar Nhial. He has a huge library of recordings that are ready to escape from the dark digital memory banks. According to Mathlovsky Phantoms contains ten tracks, in fact misfits, that remained between two different worlds and actually don't belong anywhere.

A bombardment of pounding hard core sets immediately the tone of this album. The subtly balanced crackling is interwoven with all kinds of samples and invites switching into a rave overdrive. Mathlovsky remains an unpredictable sound artist. Various styles are seamlessly stitched together into compelling tracks full of adventurous excesses. Break beat, electro, dark step and dub are cooked into a stew with spiced delicacies.

From breakcore beats with fiddling squeaks and soundscapes to a dub track that comes very close to Burial (Online Cult Leader). Mathlovsky stands for variety.  ‘That Remix I Made For Despoilah’ gives some space for quieter and floating atmospheres with a cinematic outcome. The spaghetti western melody at the end of this resting point bears witness to an approach with a very broad taste in music styles.

The pumping, contrary wire percussion is omnipresent and Mathlovsky is not tempted to fall into the cliche trap. He provides enough input to furnish every track with razor-sharp edges. On the last two tracks Mathlovsky takes his guitar by the hand to provide the pumping beats with surprising string chords.

On Veganopticon, in our opinion the apotheosis on this collection of misfits, all registers are opened and a new kind of metal break core is forged. Heavy, screaming guitar riffs with drums (and beats) are adorned with gargling death metal vocals into a black burnt porridge of sound. The added ethereal vocal lines and the experimental post-rock tending ending on this last track of Phantoms show once again that this Belgian artist embraces various (extreme)styles of music. 
Mathlovsky will not be everyone's friend with this crazy collection of tracks but we are wild about this unpredictable release. This edition is only available in digital format on the artists Bandcamp page.


​Patsker

black metal / noise / industrial / hardcore

Over the years, the boundaries between genres have vanished more and more. Some think that is not good and try to remain pvre and trve to their roots, which should be tolerated. As long as nobody gets hurt for it. Others think that it’s good to cross boundaries and explore new genre-blending possibilities. With Mur from France it is clear from the very start – they belong to the latter group.

The six-piece combine so many styles and ideas, it is hard to twist your mind around all of them –
some parts are noise, some have an industrial touch, others bear witness to hardcore roots while all of them seem to be infused with a certain black metal attitude. So if you are looking for a band between Melvins, Pitchshifter, Venom and, let’s say, Portrayal of Guilt – here it is. Unfortunately, that sounds silly as all of the bands mentioned above do not have one single thing in common, and if you then try to get a mental impression of it, just by reading these lines – well, sorry, but your idea won’t do because Mur is more. Literally, they are more than just a combination of single ideas and styles.

Over the last couple of years we have seen a lot of developments in black metal but Mur is still a new one, because Black Metal and Industrial and Hardcore (the three main pillars) have not yet been amalgamated as cleverly as on “Brutalism”. Take “Third” as an example – it starts off with an eerie, soft combination of slightly distorted, electrified guitar picking and spherical ambient passages until a hardcore drum part kicks in and changes the tone completely.

Next is the blackened screaming by vocalist Jay and the song swirls and whirls around always
accompanied by synthesizers to give it some kind of gloom-factor. The rhythm section slows the
song down with industrial-like precision before it speeds up again and the shrieking noise parts
become stronger and then fade again when a nearly alternative metal part gives us a little clarity
with the synths now dominating again – the listener is thrown from side to side trying to grasp all
that is happening.

Clearly, one might argue that Mur are trying to do too much, trying too hard to get as many people in as possible. If you want to see it that way, you can, but maybe you are missing out on the fun of a record that shows some really good ideas and is still able to convince because of a lot of overall composition work in order to sound as if everything was in its right place. 


Thorsten

progressive rock / alternative / experimental

Ravage is an album released in September 8, the debut work of nooM, a French progressive and experimental rock project. Thirty-six minutes long, the record has seven tracks: 1) 12:34 AM; 2) Crescent; 3) Nuages; 4) Leave Me; 5) Parting; 6) When We Look At The Stars, We Whisper; 7) Where The Night Ends Us; with a serene and fugacious, almost melancholic musical splendor, the style displayed by this amazing artist is simple, but elegant, refined and masterfully cohesive. Delivering a sound agglutinated by a sensitive, but dispersive consistency, the dynamic vividness of the melodies are graciously perceptive, but also synchronically convergent. Its protuberant calmness dilacerates the introspective restlessness that subtly resides in the essence of its magnificent artistic splendor. 

The marvelous easiness of all the progressive elements are gracefully inserted into the music. The style displayed by the artist anticipates on the dynamism of its iridescent insurgencies the arduous glories of its sincere and vigorous creative possibilities. Despite its strong, homogeneous and exceptionally grounded style, the artist displays a colorful and intricate level of eclecticism and versatility. The fifth track, Parting — which in my opinion is the best — proves that perfectly. Featuring the exceptionally beautiful voice of singer Louise Dissous, the graceful vivacity of her voice certainly adds a tender element of exotic mystery to this song, that not only fits the melodies with gracious intensity, but also complements wonderfully the general guidelines of the rhythm. 

Although in a general evaluation the album can be considered very simple, Ravage is a cohesive and genuinely authorial work of art, whose creative strength is a musician that not only understands perfectly  how his most salutary qualities work, but also has the wisdom to use his technical excellence and creative virtues to conceive a sublime universe of dispersive majesty, where everything can be converted to a sonorous diagram of colorful proficiency, ostensibly crafting a dimension where musical sensibility and dynamic  pragmatism come together, to conceive restlessness as a new form of sentimental freedom.  

With gracefully renitent guitar lines that evokes the purity and calmness of a universe that has never seen light before, the music displayed in Ravage is exceptionally beautiful, and filled with a gracious imponence that is not only sincere, but also exponetially lucid and proverbial, though essentially somber in nature. Nevertheless, the style delivered by nooM is dense, dynamic and relentless, but paradoxically vivacious and splendid. Definitely, Ravage is a very intriguing, resonant, quite eventful album, a masterpiece whose  practical peculiarities redefine musical boundaries, within the diluted framework of a creative mind, that knows no limits or restricitions to its magnificent audacious nature. 


Wagner

post rock / experimental

Kesys is the debut album by an eponymous art rock project, led by French musician Jeff Grimal, released on August 30. A very concise effort — only half an hour long —, the record has six tracks: 1) Consolidated; 2) Kesys; 3) Sacré; 4) Il pleut sur notre amour; 5) Réception; 6) Soupir; with a calm and serene, but also very personal style, the sound present on Kesys is objective, though exceedingly masterful and consistent. The music delivers a powerfully dimensional symphony, that elevates the superb harmonies eagerly displayed in the work, to a level of sonorous density that is ambitiously creative and formidably proficient. Something that could be described as marginally simple, but also majestically relevant. Undoubtedly, the album delivers an unprecedented degree of virtues in the history of authorial art rock, although its degree of complexity is almost nonexistent, and its qualities are entirely grounded in the adjacent beauty inherent to the sensibility of the sound. 

The strength of the harmonies is certainly singular, and the degree of poetic beauty displayed in the musical lines are grounded in the graceful melodies that form the almost epic character of sound. With a creative proficiency as robust as its perceptive grandiosity, the intuitive talent behind this sensible musical masterpiece is exceptionally displayed in the dynamic features of the music; the sound reverberates like a fortress built up in the vast emptiness of a giant, everlasting and renitent darkness, like a dream that graciously resides upon itself. With a technical competence that appears to be as diligent as its creative inclinations, the general artistic horizon conceived by this work is splendidly elevated by the gentle, but somber grandiosity of the musician's inimitable serenity, as well as its impeccable level of diluted and straightforward sensitivity. 

With an almost perfect, but diluted serenity — whose harmonies defy the general layers of existence —, the sober musical lines crafted by musician Jeff Grimal certainly deserves wider appreciation. The exceptionally dispersive, almost melancholic melodies conceived by the artist creates an entirely new, deceptionally humane universe full of splendorous dissonances, whose energetic diagram full of restless uneasiness build an atmosphere of majestic vitality, where the soul can sleep and the conscience can rest, as long as the melodies move along with the universe crafted by the glory of its marvelous and elegant essence. 

A very magnificent debut, Kesys certainly has all the virtues to be a fantastic exponent of the alternative scene. With a tremendously singular style, that exhibits a proverbial greatness unseen in the contemporary scene, this project is a promise fulfilled, that has all the qualities at hand to keep evolving, and breaking musical boundaries, on its journey to create something entirely new, genuine, organic and vivaciously graceful.  


Wagner