post rock

Heading Nowhere is the most recent album by Polish musician Maciej Sochoń, released in January 30, under the alias Seasonal. A fifty-five minutes work, the album has eight tracks: 1) Heading Nowhere Part I; 2) Headlights; 3) Heading Nowhere Part II; 
4) Rare Composition; 5) The Point; 6) Backgrounder; 7) Heading Nowhere Part III; 8) Heading Nowhere Part IV; with a very peculiar and characteristic style, that has simplicity and serenity as his main musical trademarks, the melodies and the harmonies of this album are almost silent and pungent embraces of diluted realities, intrinsically bounded by the inherent melancholy of the human nature. With beautiful, poetic and sensible vocals – and amazingly lugubrious and despondent guitar lines – Heading Nowhere is another fantastic Seasonal album, that brings about the best qualities of his creative virtues, with such a high degree of originality, that you instantly becomes enamored of this fantastic state of the art work.

With a wonderful calmness that circumnavigates the harmonious experience of its vast sensibility, the music in general is the quintessential hyperbole of an ordinary diagram of reality, though fulfilled by the sentimental charisma of pragmatic, beautiful and dense melodies. With a great level of subtle and graceful sonorous preciousness, and a somber outlook of proverbial originality, the music displayed in Heading Nowhere – despite its overwhelming sadness – is beautiful and unique; has an abundant colorful horizon pictured by the contingencies of life, and it’s grounded in a cohesive appreciation about everything that revolves around the fragility of human existence. 

 I sincerely don’t have anything bad to write about this album. Exceedingly fantastic from the beginning until the end, Heading Nowhere is an emotional and salutary sequence of marvelous symphonies, whose sound embrace in the consistent atmosphere of its benevolent melodies the excellence of the artist’s output on its most majestic grandiosity. Cohesive, consistent and elegant – displaying a robust diagram of recognizable sonorous features without being repetitive –, Seasonal reveals itself a profoundly mature and complete artist, that deserves to expand its reputation, with all the wonderful disposition that his music splendidly exposes.  

A sensational album whose captivating, dense and sensible creativity really has no delimited horizons or boundaries, Heading Nowhere is a fantastic experience for the lovers of a delusional, though acquiescent perspective on life. While the sound can be occasionally depressive, there is enough beauty and sensibility on this record for you to feel the vehement, pure and dispersive glory of life through the serene essence of Seasonal’s music, that seems always anxious to reenergize the spirit of life with a renovated rapture predisposed to read the universe, as well as the extraordinary aspirations so common in human’s eyes.  


​Wagner

ambient / post rock

Another one of those inspiring gems from Sound In Silence and another album that deals in coincidences. Just last night, a friend and I were talking about Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack. The wailing guitars floating over vast landscapes of cheering hot nothingness. Now, this album by Helsinki based duo The Gentleman Losers also deliver this atmosphere, at least during the opening track of this remarkable album, 'Shelter From The Rain'. From then on, these two Fins take their listeners on a unique and adventurous journey, one that explores the regions of ambient, post rock, shoegaze and whatever it is that Ennio Morricone does.

Title track 'Make We Here Our Camp Of Winter' combines guitars with piano, vague percussion and ambient soundscapes. Acts like A Winged Victory For The Sullen and Helios come to mind. 'Book Of Leaves' carefully flirts with the calm side of post rock while 'Always Crashing On The Same Wave' drives on sluggish percussion and jazzy piano play. Yes, I know, that's quite varied for an album that mostly wanders through the world of ambient. This certainly is not one of those albums that make classification easy, but in most case that is a good thing.

Now, I did mention a bunch of names and I can probably add a lot more, from Brian Eno to Sigur Ros. However, even with all these influences and references, The Gentleman Losers have their own unique sound, a certain extra flavor if you will. The mentioned acts mostly have a clean, smooth texture, making it listener friendly. The tunes on this album have something darker, grittier and rougher. 'Fish Roam In Winter Water' is such a weird and even somewhat unsettling piece of music, one that gnaws on your consciousness.

In all, this is an excellent album, one that invites the listener to explore. Not just once but multiple times. 'Turning To God' is sheer beauty, and most of the other tracks have a unique quality. So I guess it's safe to say that this gem belongs in your ever expanding Sound In Silence collection. I think we can now convincingly use the term "quality label". So check it out. It's something else, something mesmerizing, something that will definitely evoke emotions.


​Serge

ambient

In the past few weeks I have been neglecting my work as a music reviewer. That's not really surprising, to be honest. Over the past four years, I have written countless of reviews for probably thousands of albums. Yet, recently things tend to get somewhat slower. The reason is quite simple: a combination of a decrease in motivation and a preference towards other projects, like writing a new book. After all, I have been putting the same words on the same screen for quite some time now and it's not always clear what this whole thing actually leads to. Then again, excellent albums do come in on a daily basis. I started to feel guilty so I decided to push out another chronique. 

That was a few days ago and since then I have been strolling through albums, emails, EP's and whatnot. The drive is back. The fun is back. The feeling of wonder is back. I couldn't be happier. Not just for me but also for labels like Sound In Silence and their amazing stable of artists. For a few years now, Sound In Silence has been sending me gem after gem after gem. I have a whole box of these beautifully handcrafted albums and here is one more for the collection. A new star in the Sound In Silence universe, although the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Alex Steward, based in Leicestershire has been around for a decade or so

The new album is titled 'This Earth To Another'. It contains eight tracks which could all be described as classic ambient music, here and there with elements from post rock and shoegaze. Opener 'Altered Fragments' breathes a similar air as Eluvium, Stars Of The Lid or Tim Hecker. As I mentioned earlier: classic ambient. But then there is track two, one of the extremely few pieces of music that seem to affect my cat. The track contains an odd percussion instrument. Every time I play this one, Lina looks up at the speakers in disbelief. The percussion also returns in 'Harvest (Slow)' where it turns the track into a blend of post rock and dark jazz.

Using a wide array of electric and acoustic instruments, including electric guitar melodies, acoustic arpeggios, layers, glacial drones, unusual beats and subtle electronics, Umber has created a varied and narrative album that never lets its listeners down. One moment you're floating on dreamy soundscapes, the next you find yourself in a gritty jazz club in early twenty century New Orleans. Fact remains, this is an adventurous piece of work, one which many ambient aficionados will appreciate.


​Serge

it's complicated

When Dirk Serries announced his transition from the ambient scene to the world of freejazz, my drone-heart wept a little. I had been fascinated by most of his ambient works. I was sure that his absence from that scene would cause a certain void, one which other talented artists would have to fill. But then I discovered one of the so-called jazz acts Dirk had gotten himself involved in. The guitar-scapes guru got company from one of the world's most mesmerizing drummers, Tomas Järmyr, and from renowned jazz musician Kristoffer Lo. Together they formed Yodok III, a trio that quickly became one on the most baffling live acts on this planet.

Their newest album, to be released on Consouling Sounds, is a one track, sixty-four minutes lasting epos. It was coined to us as something for fans of Godspeed You Black Emperor, Swans, Cult of Luna, Sigur Ros & This Will Destroy You. For a certain part, those names are quite correct but I don't think Yodok III has much to do with post-rock. Sure, there are the enigmatic drones and soundscapes, slowly building up. Very slowly in this case. There is a calm, gloomy atmosphere and the vague melodies but post-rock, nah, this is something way beyond classification. 

What sets Yodok III apart from the aforementioned bands (and from 99% of the musical acts on this earth) is the unpredictable nature of the music. You just don't know what will happen next. In that aspect, this album is a musical thriller; dark, chaotic and captivating. While the first twenty minutes are mostly calm with meandering soundscapes, the whole thing slowly evolves. The guitars gain distortion while the drums introduce themselves as the impending and forward pushing drive behind the whole band.

The beauty of this albums is, you can enjoy it at several different volume levels. It can be a calm, yet gritty, ambient album when you play it on a low volume. It can be adventurous background music on a medium level. But when you play this thing loud, as loud as a live concert, this becomes a massively compelling piece of music. In the end, yes, perhaps this is best to be compared to Godspeed You Black Emperor, but, even with half the personnel, Yodok III easily manages to deliver something more powerful, more frantic and more explosive.

This is simply awesome. Some albums come in like a comet, others like a freight train. 'This Earth We Walk Upon' comes in like a gargantuan glacier, leveling everything in its path.


Serge

post rock / progressive rock / experimental 

It's Only Permanent is an album released by American experimental progressive/ post rock group Black Flak and the Nightmare Fighters, from Salt Lake City, Utah, in January 10. Almost forty-two minutes long, the record has ten tracks: 1) It's Only Permanent, Part 1; 2) Burning at Both Ends; 3) Clustercuss; 4) On a Good Day We Can See The End From Here; 5) Sunny Day Anhedonia; 6) F41.0; 7) Bird Without Feathers; 8) Wilt; 9) It's Only Permanent, Part 2; 10) You're Gonna Carry That Weight; with a beautiful, delicate and sensible style, already in the first song, you can feel the musical grace and the revolving tenderness that encircles the majestically soft, but dense harmonies, that runs throughout this marvelous work of art. 

With creative abilities that sideline a thoroughly dispersive, fabulous, dream-like sound, able to easily conceive in the diagram of its dynamic nature the colorful notes of its melodic infinities, the general structure of the band’s music is simple, but exceedingly whimsical, diluted, fantastic and genuine. It has a voice and a salutary disposition of its own, definitely delivering a sensational projection of peripheral sensitivities throughout the serene journey made possible by the grace of its cohesive and humane elegance. 

It's Only Permanent is mainly distinguished by its predominantly calmer, gentle and beautiful sound. You may not become too impressed or exhilarated by this album initially, but definitely, its overall qualities and virtues abundantly surpasses any predictabilities the record may have. With reflexive dissonances that understands the grace of its renitent and fragile splendor, the music of Black Flak and the Nightmare Fighters is an introspective symphony of vivacious artistry, that explores in a subtle minimalism the most discreet – but at the same time extraordinary – layers of their music. 

While they do fall in more ordinary territory sometimes, this doesn’t damage their music at all. The proverbial lucidity of their style is exceedingly functional, and the postulated boundaries they melt per second displays the paradoxical undertones of a deeply sagacious, restless and dynamic creativity, that is eager to go beyond all the intrinsic musical contingencies they might perceive as restrictive. Definitely, It's Only Permanent is a beautiful album, completely worthwhile listening. If you are an enthusiast of modern experimental post rock, you will positively love this amazing work of art. 


Wagner

post rock

Colossus is an album released in January 15, by American post rock group Kosatka, from New Haven, Connecticut. A relatively concise record – a little more than half an hour long –, the record has only five tracks: 1) El Ahrairah; 2) Pale Fire; 3) Death Is A Door; 4) The Corsican Stars; 5) Colossus; an exceedingly beautiful and soft work, with a dense and spectral musical layout, the sound displayed in Colossus is simple and direct, yet aggrandizing and fascinating. Flirting discreetly with progressive rock, the guitar lines are multilayered and graceful expansive harmonious features, abundant of colorful tonalities, upon which the most versatile qualities of the music generally departs. With a sensational and ascendant atmosphere whose breathtaking vitalities resonates over its own tempestuous and restless serenity, Kosatka displays a restrained and modest, yet vigorous and passionate style.   

With a profound and refined sonorous outlook, Colossus disperses abundant elegance and visceral energy. Despite some stylistic limitations, the melodies are essentially vivid and robust, and showcase a vast degree of technical proficiency. The dynamic configuration of the sound is dilated over its structural sensibilities, that rely its intelligent grace over the fluctuating devices of its marvelously beautiful poetic virtuosities.

While some ordinary commonalities and frivolous discrepancies can be found in their sound, they are all pointless insignificances; Colossus never sounds generic, limited nor predictable. The sound has a singular identity, and a very mature and greatly evolved sense of inherent artistry. The impeccable level of professionalism displayed in the work reveals not only exceedingly proverbial technical skills, but the incontestable fact that the music of Kosatka has an imponderable degree of soul, vitality and essence. All these elements are formidably combined altogether to deliver to the audience peculiar symphonies of majestic elegance, that speaks directly with all the divergent universes present in your soul, in a profoundly humane and cohesive intensity.

The conciseness of the album is also a factor that works in the band’s favor. In the end – after so much simple, but gracious beauty – the audience is left wanting more. The overtly dense, spectacular and impressive dissonant mosaic of elegant melodies of this wonderful work are dispersed over an infinite degree of dissolute placidity, that is never too abstract or impersonal, but on the other hand isn’t restrictive either. With a coherent musical diagram that elucidates the brilliant sagacity of its own nature, Colossus is a creative and splendidly genuine work, strong enough to revitalize the genre with a pristine and pragmatic lucidity.  
         

Wagner

post rock

-aire is an album released in January 18 by American post rock band The End Of The Ocean, from Columbus, Ohio. Almost fifty minutes long, the record has ten tracks: 1)endure; 2)bravado; 3)jubilant; 4)self; 5)homesick; 6)forsaken; 7)redemption; 8)ascend; 9)desire; 10)birthright; with an exceedingly expansive, virtuous and dynamic sound, the style of The End Of The Ocean can be described as amazingly colorful, versatile and elegant. Saturated with a gracious level of vitality, authentic creativity and marvelous vivaciousness, the group combines perfectly vehement, laborious and dense technical skills with a lucid and passionate musical essence, that displays vigor, sensibility and enthusiasm. With a generally calmer style, this is a band that reunites all the major elements of post rock in a more original musical configuration, surprising the audience with an interesting degree of pungent splendor.

With an intriguing musical outlook, where serenity has a primordial place – followed by a reluctant and somnolent, but effusively discreet melancholy –, the structural devices displayed by the band are generally simple, but the elegance and the dissonant tonalities that makes their harmonies breathe are a diffuse and latent onset that revitalizes the organic intricacies of their dynamically vast, but always convergent qualities. 

Feeling yourself navigating in a permanently expansive journey of invisible inner peace, -aire can be felt as a collection of imperatively dense and dispersive consecutive symphonies, where each track can be seen as a different chapter of the same story. With lugubrious harmonies that consecrates vast despondencies through a realm of everlasting atmospheres, the music feels the graciousness of its aggrandizing melodies overlooking the horizon of different infinities, as the dynamic, but at the same time circular anatomy of their cohesive design is constantly sculpting the sound in a galaxy of fearless delicacy, in a seemingly voluntary and intuitive effort to break the ordinary patterns that can accidentally turn a vibrant artistic cosmogony into a homogeneous monotonous waste.  

The ninth song, desire, in my opinion, deserves to be highlighted. A marvelous track whose poetic density definitely escalates to a wonderful state of grace – on this song –, all the spectacular sensibilities that flourishes within the band’s splendorous virtues consecrates their boundless talent and superior sense of artistry. Listening for yourself, you quickly conclude that –aire is a superb and almost redemptive post rock album. Definitely, a work that all enthusiasts of the genre will love deeply, without a doubt. 


Wagner

post rock

SEE is an album released on January 18, by American post rock band Old Solar, from Raleigh, North Carolina. Forty-four minutes long, the record has five extensive tracks: 1)Spring Equinox: The Mountains Break Forth in Song; 2)Summer Solstice: Dancing Days in the Garden Well-Watered; 3)Autumn Equinox: A Winnowing Fork in His Hands; 4)Winter Solstice: Hallow the Hushed Earth; 5)While the Earth Remains; with a beautiful, placid and reflexive sound, that slowly dehydrates the epicenter of its dilated sonorous layout, the style of Old Solar is relatively simple and ordinary, but intuitive and competent. With solid, highly concentrated and sometimes abrasive guitar lines, the density present in their music is an interesting aspect of their creative outlook, whose effectively harmonious atmospheres rely greatly on a serene, but virtuous majesty of modest, though impeccable lucidity.  

Despite the fact that, at least initially, their sound can be felt as almost ordinary and generic, gradually, the band becomes more peculiar, audacious and authorial, though in the very limited musical context of the elements that drive the genre’s boundaries. Nevertheless, the music of SEE has a primordial identity of fragile and poetic textures, that reclaims modest degrees of gracious originality. With beautiful and dynamic melodies – that expands its organic tissue through an imperatively dense, ordained and pleasant configuration –, the album, little by little, captivates the listener, by virtue of the splendid strength that revolves around the redemptive, though discreet qualities that are abundantly unveiled by a dissolving universe of sensible and delicate music.

While SEE is not exactly a masterpiece, in the best moments, and they are abundant, the album definitely gets near the fantastic. With a cohesive, but relatively graceful epicenter of melodic calmness – that can be extensively abrasive, to a certain degree –, their style departs from the symbiosis of a majestic, but almost invariable expansive restlessness, that slowly conceives and punctuates the music with a sensational level of creativity, moderate experimentalism and sonorous consistence, that effectively makes the record a voluntary triumph of expressive and conscious virtuous sensibilities.  

SEE is an album that possibly all enthusiasts of post rock are going to be passionate about it. With a musical style that can be energetic, but at the same time patient – aligned in a horizon of subtle and vague beauty – Old Solar definitely proves with this fascinating album that they are undoubtedly a relevant musical act for the contemporary underground scene. 


Wagner

post rock / experimental 

UMA is a fantastic masterpiece released on December by French post rock supergroup FalKor. To describe this album as a splendid and fabulous state of the art work is overwhelmingly insufficient and restrictive. An exceedingly organic, imponderable and lucid allegory of ghostly harmonies that slowly penetrates into the delusional creative space of a fugacious and discreet parallel reality, the music and the general style of FalKor is an imperative, but graceful resonance of majestic splendor. The first track, Olivia, is certainly one of the best songs that I ever had the pleasure to hear. Sensationally beautiful, this marvelously poetic and dense sonorous fragrance resounds the colorful vitality of its own inflictive axis of astounding grace and elegance.  The music of FalKor is simple – at least, to a certain degree – but invariably profound and cohesive, and they know exactly how to explore with all the strength of their soul the energetic sensibilities of their vivacious and exceedingly genuine creativity.   

Forty-six minutes long, the record has seven generally extensive tracks: 1) Olivia; 2) Battement I; 3) Abooksigun; 4) Mirror; 5) Battement II; 6) Kýma; 7) Cauchemar; with some folk, electronic and medieval elements discreetly inserted into their music, the style of FalKor is peculiarly unique, expansive and uncompromised. With graceful sonorous boundaries being humanely and profusely eroded, their music is a delusional paradox being transported from an omniscient existential somnolence to an imperative rapture of despondent vitality. Working tirelessly the most intense and serene elements of their music, FalKor delivers on this work formidable symphonies of delightful splendor and peripheral demise. 

With graceful and captivating harmonies – ably inserted in a context where a consistent universe of sound collides with everlasting musical sensibilities –, UMA is a very original and intelligent creation, that fantastically revolves around the abstract densities of its own salutary musical propositions.    

Despite the fact that, in the middle, the breathtaking vitality of the album declines a little, the natural grandiosity of FalKor as a sublime victory of structural, sensitive and harmonious originality remains intact. Defying the conventional rudiments of traditional musicality, FalKor unveils the unexpected, in a superb and authentic style, that definitely will make you an avid enthusiast of this fantastic band. 
  

Wagner

post rock

Open your eyes Never wake up is an album released on December 28, 2018, by Italian post rock duo Vibes Speak Volumes. A very concise record – only half an hour long – the work consists of five tracks: 1) Who am I; 2) So close so far; 3) Where am I; 4) Rebellion; 5) Am I living; with a delicate, majestic and very poetic sonority, the sound of Vibes Speak Volumes is a simple, but graceful consecration of beautiful and sensible melodies. With a predominantly serene and solemn outlook, their style is an effervescently fugacious, but cohesive presentation of pristine and fantastic harmonies – tangentially flirting with progressive rock –, that effectively transmits the existential density that seems to be the strength of their art.  

Despite the fact that their music is elegant, there is not any stylistic or structural innovations on this record. It’s basically ordinary and common ground post rock, but, I must say, brightly created and rightfully executed. The harmonies do place the general layers of its grandiose atmosphere on higher notes, and they avoid being too predictable allowing their music to be exceedingly expansive, organic, vivid and practically devoid of artificial devices. So – despite some minor limitations – their sound is abundant of soul and essence, tied together in a coherent pattern of graceful sonorous sensibility.  

Their sound do achieve some peaks of beautiful and genuine artistry. Some peculiar elements – as fragments of a voraciously creative restlessness – lend an unexpected sophistication to their sonorous cosmogony, that slowly expands from the frontiers of its more discreet and lucid horizon, until the music becomes increasingly dynamic, resolute and primordially fantastic.  

Despite the inescapable and usual commonalities found in the album, Open your eyes Never wake up is a formidable work, that showcases the potential of a promising and virtuous musical act. Devoid of contingencies that could easily label them as generic, Vibes Speak Volumes displays competent, arduous, graceful and coherent abilities, that sometimes do achieve modest degrees of perfection. Certainly, they have potential to build a career in the underground, with enough talent to become the next big thing in the post rock scenario. 


Wagner