ambient / post rock

Northern Constellation is an album released on August 2, by Polish post rock group Fading Tapes. Sixty four minutes long, the record has only three very extensive tracks: North Pole, which lasts ten minutes and a half, Leo Minor, the longest, which is more than half an hour, it lasts thirty two minutes and fifteen seconds exactly, and the last, Northern Constellation, the title track, that lasts twenty one minutes and thirty five seconds. The record has a proverbial density, and although requires a certain amount of patience from the listener, the album definitely is worthwhile listening. Very peaceful, quiet and introspective – working the ordeals of a subtle, allegorical and serene atmosphere –, the harmonies dive through an exponential and sensible existential quasi-minimalism. Nevertheless, it is absolutely required for the audience to have greater passion for the genre, as the risk of monotony do exist, especially on the course of the longest track.  

The album works brilliantly as ambient or background music. On it, the musical textures are emphasized, and the stability of the harmonies become a major mainstay. Nevertheless, the rhythm of the melodies – and its inherent structure – never change. The ethereal and vague surreal commonalities of the music fades away slowly, although there is a lucid beauty subtlety diluted at the pervasive pellicle of its expansive universe of solemn and somnolent serenity. 

The lethargic nature of Northern Constellation has a rudeness that overcomes the axial system of its own sensibility. Despite the rigid stability that testifies little to no variations, the music has a subjective ordeal that highlights the ostensible paralysis of its analytic conglomeration of soundscapes. The work definitely has its incontestable merits, and the group has a very distinct and singular style. But its unchangeable nature makes it somewhat difficult to fully appreciate the album with energetic enthusiasm, although the band definitely achieves the objectives of its musical proposal, and you can’t say they are really excellent on the execution of their placid and fugacious form of artistry.

With an ephemeral, surreal and serene atmosphere that characterizes the music, and becomes its central qualities, Northern Constellation is an interesting and rather peculiar album. While you cannot expect anything marvelous nor extraordinary, the work definitely is a decent exemplar on the genres of post rock and ambient music, as you definitely have an intricate set of qualities, that can lead you through a solitary, peaceful and humane sonorous journey. 


Wagner

ambient / drone / post rock

Hymn of a Voyage Wander is an album released on August 4, by American musician Damien Duque, under the alias of City of Dawn. Almost fifty-three minutes long, the record has eight tracks: Abditory, The Quiet Explosion, My Spirit Dances with your ghost, As Petals turns to Ashes, Capturing the pattern of your silence, Saudade, I See you for the last time... and Slowly Dancing Away.... With very calm, serene and transcendental harmonies, the music of City of Dawn is simple, driven by a peaceful, sentimental and resigned melancholy, that achieves at the diagram of its sonorous resilience a slow and robust, but embracing fatuity, upon which its sensibilities discreetly collide with its own expansive atmosphere of everlasting oblivion. 

A very interesting ambient musical work, whose thin pellicle of sound hides a profound continuous transcendence, the methodic, intrinsic and quasi-minimalist nature of the work is noteworthy. Nevertheless, given the fact that the album has little melodic variations, its placid and lethargic uniformity gives to its gracious density almost a frozen anatomy, a sonorous paralysis where an ephemeral dimension of dreams cast shadows over the real world, in an interchangeable sensibility of surreal atmospheres, where everything is placed underneath a fog of introspective grace.     

While the sonorous atmosphere is intelligently elaborated and profoundly  consistent, the work  suffers from a certain degree of predictability. Despite its serene and poetic tone, the album resents itself from lack of audacity and innovation, and eventually falls into a generic mainstay, which is somewhat inherent to the genre. 

Evidently, there is a lucid and cautious degree of creativity here. The musical style is solid and cohesive, and – following the structural pattern of the genres in question – the artist stay loyal to its sonorous proposal, that nevertheless is genuine, although, as the album progresses, it’s hard not to feel sleepy, as the work do possess somnolent, calm and quiet elements, that relaxes the soul, and cease all the restlessness of the spirit. Maybe, this is the greatest triumph of Hymn of a Voyage Wander, although the album do exhibit a level of technical and methodic proficiency that highlights its undisputable virtues and qualities.

 
Wagner

post rock

Every Nothing is an album released on August 3, by American post rock band Tides of Man, from Tampa Florida. Almost one hour long, the album has the following tracks: Static Hymn, Mercury Fields, New Futures, Far Off, Old 88, Waxwing, Keep Telling Yourself, Everything Is Fine, Everyone Is Happy, Death Is No Dread Enemy, Outside Ourselves, Mosaic and Infinite Ceiling. The beauty, the transcendence and the splendor of the melodies present in the album are highly exceptional. With dramatic, dense and poetic soundscapes whose contiguous waves breaks into the crest of an everlasting universe of marvelous omniscience, the melodies – despite their relative simplicity – seems to grew out of overflowing harmonies saturated with natural and spontaneous graciosity. 

With a melancholy that flirts in a very organic diagram with a delusional, but proficient and sensational sonorous grandiosity, the music of Tides of Man is a colossal wave of a continuous journey of fragile, but lucid realities, framed by a picture of elemental dreams. Flirting a little with a very discreet type of sentimental minimalism – that is as marvelous as methodical –, their modest, but singular style has on the ordinary rhythmic vicinities of its anatomy the expansive mordacity of an unborn symphony entirely made on existential serenity.   

The general pace of the harmonies is permanently calm and slow, but, paradoxically, the guitar lines display a ferocious and sometimes ardent, passionate emotional vitality, that impregnates the music with the splendor of an abrasive, but sincere aggression, that expands the boundaries of the musical procession to the innermost perceptions of the listener’s personal sensibilities, propitiating a fantastic connection with the soul and the essence behind the music, that can be properly classified as profound, sober and ardently consistent.     

While the album is not perfect, and has some moments of insipid monotony, the album manages to be a fabulous exemplar of the genre, with its qualities far obscuring the minor generic commonalities somewhat inherent to the genre. As a matter of fact, in its abundant passages of gracious virtuosities, Every Nothing comes close to a state of the art work. Definitely, this is an album for the post rock scene to be proud of – a work where methodical technique, authorial creativity and genuine sonorous mordacity meet, with an extraordinary and fantastic result.  


Wagner

post rock

A Long Lost Silence is an album released on July 20, by German post rock act There’s A Light. Fifty-one minutes long, the record has eight tracks: Intro, Beiteigeuze, White Marble, Farewell, My Friend, Across The River, Into The Trees, Far North, Antagonism and A Long Lost Silence. With powerful and resolute guitar lines, audacious melodies, a formidably intense sonorous atmosphere and very creative, vivid and colorful musical elements, the album presents a cohesive, elegant, singular and proverbial style, easy to captivate audiences. With an harmonious synergy that extends itself beyond the crucial landmark of its versatile, energetic and flexible sonorous axiom, A Long Lost Silence has more vibrant tonalities than usually testified in works of the genre. A complex, lucid and methodic work, A Long Lost Silence reveals a level of creative sagacity, splendid virtuosity and natural originality whose sensibility rapidly touches the essence and the vicissitudes of the human spirit. 

The songs are generally marvelously beautiful and wonderfully composed. A great, delightful surprise – that unfortunately we rarely experience in the genre – was the presence of vocals, although on an occasional basis. A beautiful, poetic, fantastic, splendorous voice, that perfectly matches the general musical layer of the work. Achieving a rapturous and graceful sonorous zenith, that strongly makes you feel a mile above the clouds, the natural grace and the elementary spontaneity of the music reaches a sensational level of sincere and sober splendor, that irradiates the genuine, infallible and inherent musical qualities that were expressively and methodically combined to create this marvelous work.  

Unfortunately, the album is not perfect. It doesn’t scape its pervasive percentage of monotony, although it is just a handful of passages, that doesn’t compromise in any way the fantastic and tremendously original style of the group. The music of There’s A Light is exceedingly vivid, consistent, beautiful, sensibly poetic and thoroughly magnificent, like no other band in the genre. They are, indeed, expressively incomparable. 

A vigorously splendid album that I really loved with passionate enthusiasm, filled with a charismatic, profound, gracious, serene, ostensibly vivid and formidably genuine musical vivacity, the creativity of the band is surreal, expansive and graciously cinematic. A Long Lost Silence is a sensational and aggrandizing album, a work where a profoundly authorial type of music – created with a hyperbolic and vast degree of originality – was born, and has in abundance all the necessary qualities to take by storm the underground scene.     


Wagner

post rock / drone / post metal

Ever since the first days of Merchants Of Air, I have been fascinated by one man projects and their often surprising output. Not only noise and ambient artists but also musicians in the fields of post rock, black metal, classical music and doom. There are heaps of talented people out there and most of them rarely get the attention they deserve.
So when I saw this album by Polish project Noche Oscura in my mailbox, I immediately became interested. The project, formed by Wojciech Szachowski also seems to roam in the post-rock/metal regions. Besides, the artwork by Michał Szymański is pretty stunning too, so I just had to check this one out.

It was coined as a post rock, post metal album but the first tones seemed to pour directly out the noise scene. Opener 'End' is strange, something between noise, guitar drones and post rock. I'm not sure if it is an intro but it is a quite unique tune. There is a drummer, Mateusz Mazur, but his work seems to be rather limited. The post-scene is far away but somehow that doesn't matter. Besides, the true beauty of Noche Oscura still has to bloom.

And that happens on 'Suspension', a song that contains violins by Katarzyna Gronowska and seems to be inspired by many of today's drone-ambient acts (Syndrome, Thisquietarmy, N) but also by Mike Oldfield. What? Well, much like Oldfield, Noche Oscura doesn't limit itself to elaborate droning ambient tunes. Here, the artists tried to tell stories, mainly with the narrative sound of the guitars. It's different, it's nice and it's certainly interesting.

My personal favorite here is 'Before', an ambient drone tune that also borrows elements from the music of Amenra or Neurosis but also the dark folk of Barn Owl and the post rock of God Is An Astronaut. Mind you, all still without the drums, making me wonder how massive this track would sound with a full live band. That must be bloody impressive, if you ask me. Same goes for closer 'Gate', an impending track, nudging to the doom scene.

Although coined as something for fans of Sunn O))), Amenra, Ulver and Neuroris, I'd probably place this album in my ambient/dark folk collection. That is not a bad thing, on the very contrary. I enjoyed every second of this album, even the confusing chaos of the opener. I'm just afraid that this artist limits himself a bit too much. If he forms a full blown band with this material, they'll be on big ass stages in no time, but for now, let's all enjoy these sounds in the quiet comforts of our own homes...


​Serge

dark jazz / post rock / doom

I don't really know how to start this review. I want to write about the short appearance of A-Sun Amissa in my book, 'Cecilia's World' (---->) but I also want to write about that breathtaking concert at Trix that inspired that particular passage. I want to write about how I immediately became a huge A-Sun Amissa fan and about how they expanded the entire dark jazz scene.

But I think the safest way to do this is to dig deep into this brand new album and see how this project by Richard Knox (Shield Patterns, Glissando, founder of Gizeh Records) has evolved in the past few years. 

'Ceremony in the Stillness', to be released September 14th, contains six tracks, all slow and compelling. On this follow-up to the highly acclaimed 'The Gatherer' A-Sun Amissa seems to dig deeper that ever before. The jazz elements faded to the background, making place for post rock and doom metal. On several of these tracks, including the immersive opener 'The Black Path', Knox twists the distortion knob a bit more.

Now, I can say a lot of things about this album, but there is one thing in my mind throughout the entire duration: a front seat at the forest stage of Dunk! festival. Now more than ever I see this band being a massive highlight on this Flemish post rock event, and all other related festivals around the world. With emotional rollercoasters like 'To The Ashes' or closer 'Remembrancer' , A-Sun Amissa will undoubtedly enchant audiences far and wide.

I guess it's not a surprise that bands like Mono, Stars Of The Lid and A Swarm Of The Sun come to mind more often than the Bohren or Dale Coopers of this world, which was the case on 'The Gatherer'. Lingering guitars and steady drum rhythms now make up most of the music, but the gloomy, intrinsic atmosphere remains a constant. Just listen to the fascinating anthem 'The Skulk' which does beautiful things with ambient, noise and avant garde classical music, often with the help of Jo Quail and other guests.

'No Perception Of Light' makes me realize that this project didn't really chance. It just continued its evolution towards ever more intriguing slow and murky music. Back then, I thought 'The Gatherer' was a highlight in the so-called "slowism" scene but this new work surpassed that, even though the much beloved jazz elements are now backgrounded. 'Ceremony in the Stillness' is a perfectly balanced album, one I would like to recommend to all fans of slow and dark. 


Serge

dark ambient

bandcamp

A fifteen minutes EP with four tracks, Dark Hymns lives to the glory of its simple, but energetic and suggestive title. With a very dark, subtle and obscure sound, the sensitive premises of the style are afflictive to the fullest – despite being paradoxically peaceful and serene –, and seems to anticipate the imminence of a profoundly terrible doom. While the work presents to the audience a very simple and surreal sound, its nuances are dense, and the excellence of its atmosphere dissipates a graceful and somber fear over the boundaries of the melodies. There is nothing too exceptional or extraordinary about this work, but for dark ambient genre enthusiasts, the vivid, morbid intensity displayed by the artist behind the project is certainly vast, very meaningful, and spiritually consistent. 

electronic / darksynth / dark electro / synthwave

Crossing Lights is an album released on June 22, by German electronica/ synthwave act Collapse Project. A wonderfully splendid album, with eleven tracks – Where everything began, Crossing Lights, Arise from the darkness, M.e.n.s.c.h., Pursuit,
Bloody Dancefloor, Cemetery Walk, Starfighter, Nightshift, Test Drive and Rewind – this marvelous and majestic state of the art work has colorful harmonies, a vibrant, lucid and energetic pace, an intense and cohesive style and a superb sense of rhythmic rapture. With softly pungent, dense and dynamic mordacious melodies that engraves its formidable intrinsic strength at the voracious pace of the music, the album is fulfilled with a tremendously aggrandizing and creative originality, displaying a talent that has everything to stand out as uniquely authentic in the contemporary underground scene. Showcasing a sensational musical grandeur whose artistry is effectively sidelined with the most vivid and hallucinating melodies, the genuine musical abilities of Collapse Project is a gigantic cosmic evolutionary step in what concerns the general development of the genre. With some of the most beautiful songs that I’ve ever heard, Crossing Lights is an unprecedented milestone in the history of electronica. Certainly, deserves not only to be fully appreciated, but highly highlighted as one of the most beautiful, sensational and singular albums ever conceived. 

death metal 

Coffin Birth is an album released on July 20, by Californian death metal group Extremity. With eight songs – Coffin Birth / A Million Witches, Where Evil Dwells, Grave Mistake, Umbilicus, For Want Of A Nail, Occision, Like Father Like Son and Misbegotten / Coffin Death – the record is a satisfactory, lucid and efficient, but hallucinatory and hazardous death metal album, that works decently the most traditional elements of the genre. With heavy, fast rhythms that exposes the voracity of their style, Extremity showcases a peculiar, brutal, direct style, atrocious to the core of its corrosive nature. Despite the fact that the album at some rare passages becomes a little predictable and monotonous, this does not affect the general layout of the sound, nor does any damage to the competent and precise style of the band. Their aggressive strength is somewhat inherent to the most brutal and extreme ramification of the genre, and the name of the band certainly stands for it. While you can’t expect too much of innovative features on this record, Coffin Birth displays a decent amount of virtuosity, talent and definition, and certainly honors the genre with a virulent and passionate degree of astounding sonorous hostility, that will entertain avidly the most dedicated enthusiasts of extreme death metal.    

grunge / stoner rock/ power metal / black metal / alternative rock

Released on June 22, Desolation is an album by alternative post grunge/ power metal rock group Khemmis. With six tracks – Bloodletting, Isolation, Flesh To Nothing, The Seer, Maw Of Time and From Ruin – this gracefully peculiar, audacious and cohesive record showcases the splendid abilities of a band that does an amazingly superb and exceedingly sophisticated work in their amalgamation of several different genres and styles of music. With a power metal core heavily infused by a post grunge alternative rock density, the music of Khemmis has its own singular and energetic creative groundwork, fuelled by an outstandingly voracious and rude nitroglycerine spontaneous synergy, that explodes directly in the brain of the listener. A little reminiscent of more classic and mainstream acts like Manowar, Creed and Blind Guardian – although exposing a formidable degree of uniqueness – the band does a surprisingly splendorous and excellent work on Desolation, that reveals itself as a marvelous, profoundly genuine and sensational album, all the way through. Undoubtedly, Desolation deserves to be classified as one of the greatest masterpieces of the year.  

electronic

A beautiful, outstanding, lancinating and colorful EP, Gated Soul has four tracks: Blues For Jekyll, Last Raver, Hocus Pocus and To The Woods. With beautiful melodies, and very sensible, delightfully plausible harmonies, there is a genius spontaneity coming out from these songs that actually make you feel quite enthusiastic about it. With an exceedingly serene, but at the same time ostensibly sensational and mandatory vibe, the artist reveals a subtle, but formidable sense of originality on the framework of the sound that is the embodiment of this work. From within, the melodies gradually expand from a synergy that relocates the rhythm directly to the point of its graciously moving syncope. Exposing lucidity and showcasing an extraordinary degree of creativity, this electronic music artist from Great Britain has no fear in demonstrating his superb, masterful and singular talent, that easily reinvigorates in a more sophisticated sonorous artistry the greatest elements of electronica. Here you have four amazingly wonderful songs, that you will be pleased to hear over and over again. 

black metal / death metal

A very impressive, hostile and energetic album – although widely using exceedingly crude and conventional elements by some standards – Krwawy Sztorm, by Polish extreme metal group Moloch Letalis, is an aggressive, furious and bloodthirsty album. Only thirty minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Wielka Egzekucja, Sztorm, Krwawa Ziemia, Zatańczysz Ze Mną Kurwa W Piekle ?, Przysięga, Zdychaj Psie, Palownik, Gotowy Na Piekło and Żar. With ostensive and abrupt rhythmic grievances, the style of the group is simple and direct, a little reminiscent of punk rock, given the atrocious voracity, objectivity and rudeness of its style. With a solid fidelity to the most brutal aspects of the genre, the work is amazingly competent and full of acid rage. Although there is nothing too aggrandizing nor original about the work, certainly this album is a pearl for avid enthusiasts of the genre, since Moloch Letalis literally practices closely the most ardent, extreme, raw and violent aspects of death and black metal, executing a refined breed of these marvelous genres. If you like astoundingly heavy material, Krwawy Sztorm is something you would like to hear. 

electronic / techno / industrial 

With six tracks – Entrance of Gargoyles, Dance or Die, The Order, Mechanical Vampire, The Cavern of Noise and Theunderdogme 2018hardrem1x – The Cavern of Noise, by techno industrial French artist McClane is a formidable, very intuitive and lancinating work. With abrasive and disruptive rhythms, increasingly grotesque and infuriating harmonies, cohesive dilapidation of sound and very unpredictable, dense musical compasses, The Cavern of Noise is an interesting work of art, astoundingly engraved at forefront of the best tradition of techno music. With elements that plays on the fundamental axis of the noise and industrial genres, the artist evokes at the colorful blast of the music an atmospheric vitality that rejuvenates the harmonies and the anatomy of the music. With a lucid, compulsory and graceful creativity that is exponential to the ardent mordacity of the melodies, on this album, you certainly get the best the genre will ever offer you. The title track – The Cavern of Noise – is absolutely the best, and will leave you with the dense exposition of what electro techno music should really sound like. 

black metal

Mysteries of Earth, released by British black metal group Blutvial on July 5th, is a formidable, lucid and splendorous album. Fully energized, mortally intense and with sordidly aggressive, rapturous and impulsive, but lugubrious and poetic guitar lines, Mysteries of Earth is better described as a marvelous state of the art work. With ten amazingly placid and cohesive tracks – beneath the moon, black silence, existential rite, vault of unrest, carving nihil, midwinter's halls, urnacht, doomed to eternal night, in praise of noctula and where graves spring open – this fantastic work, besides its subtle originality, extraordinary grandiosity and proverbial musical audacity, consolidates firmly and brings about intrinsically the best qualities of the genre: hostile mordacity, somber harmonies, an aggressive stylish impetus, creative melodies, a rapid pace and an exceedingly volatile density. With the organic virtue of a profoundly vital and conscious musical dynamic, you can certainly highlight this record as one of the best black metal pieces released this year. Mysteries of Earth is a punctuating device and a majestic work of art in the history of the genre.     

black metal

Cosmic Autumn is the debut album of an eponymous black metal project from Germany. Released on July 13, the record has five tracks: The Last Deception, Event Horizon, Indistinct Visions, Realms Of Eternal Light and Solitude (Instrumental). With a beautiful and very original musical layer, very sober and proficient, the sound is definitely strong, sensitive, dynamic and fundamentally cohesive. Although the record retains the fury typical of the genre, Cosmic Autumn is also a lesson on sincere and poetic artistry, as the music revolves itself around a shroud of mortifying serenity, like a twilight that dies in the agony of an everlasting moment of unspeakable affliction. Since the music translates into sound these imponderable passages of pervasive anger, the overall loyalty of the project’s style to the genre is emphasized, but without compromising the ability of the artist in showcasing his own peculiarities. A very good work, that certainly exposes the mordacious talent of an exponentially promising black metal artist, Cosmic Autumn is the opening gate for a musician that has everything to aggregate into the genre a whole new conjuncture of possibilities, with his audacious and ostensibly brilliant creativity. 

stoner rock/ psychedelic rock 

bandcamp

Earthborn is an album released by Greek stoner rock group Stone Age Mammoth. Forty minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Fearless, The Dark, Whispers, The Mysterious Life Of Mr Krips, The Secret, Earthborn and My Darkest Hour. An exceedingly calm, methodic and meticulous, but exceedingly vigorous and lucid album, undoubtedly, Earthborn is a fantastic state of the art work, that dissects, reverberates, comprehends and exposes the best aspects the genre has to offer. With singular, serene and soft guitar lines, a configuration of sonorous walls that grows from the sincere stylish leniency of the group and a marvelous sense of timing that knows from instinct what has to be done, Stone Age Mammoth has a formidable artistic security and a powerful domain over the genre, that comes out naturally. Revealing itself as a graceful masterpiece as the album evolves and revolves around its own atmosphere of calmness, omniscience and existential perception, the glorious creativity of the group certainly highlights them among other bands of the genre. With a singular conjuncture of sonorous qualities, Earthborn deserves to be greatly regarded, widely appreciated and publicized as the wonderful and fantastic work of art that truly is.

black metal

Nostalgia is an EP released on July 23 by German black metal artist ColdWorld. With five tracks – Cosmos Devourer, Demon Speed, The Dark Ages, Let The Devil In and Silva Nigra – the EP, almost twenty six minutes long, is concise. Exceedingly beautiful, with the typical elegance that is an engraved milestone of the artist, the proverbial guitar lines and the poetic harmonies anticipates the general conflagration of its overall majestic serenity, deeply fulgurated with the sensible character of its everlasting, elegant and somber  horizon of artistry. With rapid passages that are profoundly surrounded by graciously atmospheric interludes, the music on Nostalgia is overloaded with the imperial fragrances of its own rudimentary darkness, that is sustained by a lucid and dense, but marvelously whimsical ferocious resentment, whose vitality extrapolates the shadows of its own arrogant beauty. With everlasting precipices of color surrounding the rhythmic fortunes of the songs, I must confess that I wasn’t particularly overwhelmed by this work. Nevertheless, Nostalgia has all the elements that are characteristic of a ColdWorld work, and, to a certain extent, has enough qualities to be deemed valuable for its sincere and splendid level of singularity.    

post rock / experimental

Return is a three tracks EP released on July 25, by a musician from India, who works under the nom de plume of Phet. With three marvelous songs – Return, Distance and Liberation – Phet works very distinctively the interior perception of the harmonies, to articulate an ascendant, protuberant and expansive, but at the same time discreet, lucid and introspective degree of sonorous exhilaration. With a pungent, incisive axis of conscious melodic devices, correctly assimilated by the lenient, but purposeful stability of its glorious symbiosis of organic dissonances, that seems lethargic at first, the intrinsic nature of the rhythmic serenity that grows within this musical horizon slowly works towards the digressive elements of the harmonies, revolving around a certain complexity that obliterates the cosmic volatility of its formidably eloquent style. With a futurist, colorful, modernist musical approach that made the external shape of the songs, indeed, to sound in an exceedingly beautiful and elegant fashion, Return can be positively described as a very gracious, audacious and original work of art. The last track, Liberation, I would certainly highlight as my favorite. If you want to listen to something very surprising, astute and genuine, I definitely recommend this marvelous and surreal EP. 

Wagner

post rock 

Amaranthine is an album by American post rock group Ninth Moon Black. Fifty-one minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Under the Aphotic Veil, Amaranthine, Sorrow's Provenance, Patient Are the Forlorn, Trod (The Ash of Ruin), Upon Addled Ground and Crestfallen Is This World. With interesting, exasperating, exceedingly dense, cutting edge restless harmonies, that at the same time appear to be sober, quiet and slow, Ninth Moon Black practices solid, unpretentious and enthusiastic post rock, with a clear, crystalline and relevant set of harmonies, that levitates above the melancholic, and strictly abrasive premises of its own modest structure. 

Despite its apparent, even mordacious simplicity, the album is coherent on the delivery of its latent musical proposal, and all of its harmonies are present in a very idyllic, serene proverbial context. The band has a very intelligent and singular style, and its guitar lines are especially lancinating and thoroughly consistent. The group also aggregates progressive elements into the musical atmosphere, generating an interesting effect. Nevertheless, I must say that there is nothing astoundingly exceptional about this work, although Amaranthine cab be gracefully experienced with enormous satisfaction, and without any hesitation or fear of disappointment. The group greatly stands at the highest standards of the genre, and knows how to engrave in the sonorous waves of its anatomy a decent level of stylish uniqueness. 

In the end, the sound of the album is excessively uniform for my personal taste, but the band does not disappoint. Their style is amazingly clean, introspective and precisely dense, full of interesting harmonious nuances. Overall, they project a vehement presence over their fluent and salutary incorporating density, which gives the illusion of the sound becoming apparently even more sentimental, rough and palpable. Their technical proficiency is also very practical, and stands side by side with their logical and reasonably experimental artistic approach.   

Their musical objectivity, sidelined with dramatic beauty, is elevating, intense and properly elegant. Like I wrote some lines above, this album will probably not impress you, but almost certainly will enchant you. It deserves a respectable level of attention, the band is fully compromised in delivering to its audience a terrific, formidable and excellent sound.    


​Wagner
  

post rock / progressive rock

Into the Known is an album released on June 1st by German post rock group Planisphere. Almost fifty minutes long, the album has eight tracks: The Future Needs Roots, Festive And Peaceless, [A]maze, Nautical Jaunt, Chin Up, Chest Out, Looming Lights, Juncture and Origins Embraced. With beautiful, sensible and straddling guitar lines, the group in this work presents wonderful melodic qualities. The harmony lines are relatively simple, but quite symbolic, symmetric and elegant, and the general rhythmic sophistication delivered easily outstands itself smoothly, with marvelous, serene and stylish elements that gives the group unique musical features.    

Although at first they seem to follow the general conventional principles of the genre, soon you perceive that they have a very singular identity, as they vividly play with progressive elements in their music as well, and with competent security. There is also a colorful sentimental component in their sound that makes impossible not to feel enthusiastic while listening to it. The guitar lines, indeed, are quite splendid at times, and the creative musical features that group presents to its audience throughout this superb sonorous journey showcases a wide range of abilities and artistic appetite, that doesn’t fear at all being experimental and genuine, at the essence of its nature.    

This album certainly exhibits secure musicians in their best form, exposing a tremendous amount of organic synergy between them, that shows how they converge exceedingly well together, and how they are amazingly synchronized. The style can be defined as quite impeccable, and – despite a few moments of monotony – the album highlights itself by the greatest amount of masterful and splendorous originality presented by its daring and fearless style.

Interesting for enthusiasts of the progressive and post rock genres, Into the Known is a very mature and solid work of art, that really exhibits a coherent group – secure of its abilities and uniqueness –, that really knows how to create, deliver and display a sincere, cohesive and fascinating work of art.  
 

Wagner

post rock

Memories is an album released on June 26 by a Russian post rock artist, that presents itself by the alias of Sleep Dealer. Strong and interesting, at forty eight minutes long, the record has ten tracks: Breaking The Waves, Secret Fairway, Winter I, Winter II, Winter III, Black Desert, Into The Abyss, Memories, Sinner and Regrets. A beautiful, decently conceived and well delineated work, that filters, understands and consecrates the tenacity of its vivid and salutary melodies before dispersing them in the dust of relatively severe and abrasive rhythms, the overall style of the artist plays in the icy precipice of tenacious and improbable, but densely concentrated waves of creativity, that works within the general limits of post rock, albeit challenging at certain points the overall restrictions inherent to the anatomy of the genre.  

Gracefully and enchantingly displaying an affection for calm and serene harmonies, Memories is a very good ambient work, whose sound combines perfectly with peaceful silent places and a heavenly state of mind. The music displayed by the artist is simple – it will hardly impress experienced listeners of the genre –, although the profound degree of technical competence and knowledge found in the work is astoundingly relevant. 

Certainly an album that can be described as beautiful, elegant and sincere, a vehement simplicity seems to be the main structural ordeal of the music. With a direct style, that communicates its spiritual sensitivity to the listener through frugal and intuitive melodies, Memories manages to be a captivating and emotional work, whose practical and uncomplicated tenure is quite appealing to the sensibilities of the soul.   

While the work certainly resents a little the absence of more sophisticated audacities – the album can be perceived as monotonous at times –, the general feeling the work transmits is undoubtedly singular and moderately fascinating. Although Memories has a modest degree of predictability, the final evaluation of the work can be described as positively genuine and splendid. The guitar lines are strikingly well crafted, and explores the creation and consistence of the sound in a placid atmosphere of harmonious resignation, that invites the listener to rest for a while, until the world recovers from the degrading lethargy of its apathy, that are gradually destroying the frail tissue of existence. Definitely, Memories deserves to be described as a lucid, poetic, sensible and gracefully intense album, that transports the mind of the listener to a calmer, solitary, quiet and confident parallel universe.   



Wagner