post rock

Heaven Can Wait is an album released by ambient post rock group Khara, from Macedonia. A very concise album, only thirty minutes long, the work has five tracks: Heaven Can Wait, Suddenly Awake, Imagining Ghosts, Can You Fix A Broken Memory? and Through The Darkness, We Became Men. An album with a calm, sweet and serene atmosphere, Heaven Can Wait is better described as conventional post rock. With strong qualities – like consistent rhythms, flexible guitar lines and effective harmonies – the style of the group is meticulously consistent. Despite the sometimes excessively slow melodies, the album showcase a band with a modest degree of competent creativity and discreet technical abilities, that knows how to intelligently display its diluted virtues in a more melancholic, dense and lugubrious atmosphere. 

With a proficient technique, that encircles its diluted ocean of highly concentrated peripheral harmonies in a more convergent stream of sensibilities, the music of Khara focuses the strength of its sound on the creation of a torrid and intense, but at the same time deeply sincere and humane atmosphere. Gracefully exhibiting in all the traces of its musical tenderness the essence of its soul, the passionate vitality of the melodies comes from the concentrated synergy of its unquestionable creative veracity, that is seemingly dissipated in every note of its fabulous lugubrious cadences.

Despite the fact that the album follows a general pattern of slow harmonies, the songs are instinctive pieces of introspective liberty. With a curious expansive anatomy, and a fatalist dispersive nature that overexposes the shadow of its constrained resonant disturbances, the music in Heaven Can Wait is practically an elegy to a solitary afternoon, forever lost in the winter funeral of an everlasting sorrow, that reclaims its own deceptive grief to consistently bury all the days to come. 

With a formidable level of beauty that certainly surpasses the prerogative of its abundant and intrinsic commonalities, Heaven Can Wait, on a more general basis, is definitely an ordinary post rock album. Nevertheless, on the other hand, there is a magnificent degree of originality exposed on the profoundness of its laborious and cohesive essence; especially on the latent, genuine and creative sincerity upon which the music expresses a passionate, infinite and pervasive level of melancholy, without ever disrupting it. Giving form and consistence to a sound that elaborates on the resonance of its own continuity, Heaven Can Wait certainly can be considered an interesting album, that has enough qualities to captivate an audience.


Wagner

post rock

Before This Wilderness Consumes US is an album released by Swedish post rock band Feed Me To The Waves. Almost forty-two minutes long, the record has only five very extensive tracks: The Permian, Weave Your Fur (Landfish), The Open Narrows, It's Really Nice Weather Down Here and Shutter. A beautiful, relaxing album, with a predominantly slower pace, the record has the lucid serenity of a stagnant horizon as its fundamental component. With an elegant, gentle and gracious sympathy, the style of the group is simple, but drastically profound, with its continuous flow of lugubrious patience ardently emphasizing the consistency of the harmonies, over the introspective rhythmic devices of the sonorous anatomy of its peaceful intuitive layer. 

While the mordacity of the songs seems to gracefully reverberate over its inherent perennial cadences, the exponential splendor of serenity engraves all the sensitive majesty that is the embodiment of the songs. The harmonies undertake an extraordinary journey, that notifies the spirit of its creative splendor. So, the work definitely has a profound, proverbially methodic and philosophic nature, highlighted by a style cohesively applied on the anatomy of its discreet, but colorful musical pragmatism, which is indeed very beautiful and functional, but the prevalent calmness that oversees the entire album can be felt as a minor deficiency. Nevertheless, the album presents a formidable musical consistency, that serves to its sensible quest for a higher and more dispersive pattern of artistry. 

The guitar lines are quite abrasive, pungent and intense, all the musical paradigms can be felt as a dense version of reality flowing throughout the abstract vitalities of its laborious virtues. The most discreet elements of the music are anomaly hidden behind the shadows of its linear, but irreplaceable patience, that drives a coherent musical diagram throughout the vicinities of its own salutary acquiescence. Unfortunately, chances are high that the listener will eventually become exasperated with so much uneasy tenderness. 

There is definitely a restless veracity on the surface of these beautiful harmonies, that reveals a latent splendor and an authorial creativity that has a brutal strength hidden within its latent mordacity and restrained anatomy. The technical skills and the general layer of the music displays a very cohesive sonorous disposition, but there are deceptive elements that makes predictability and sameness to be major deficiencies, upon which the group fails to avoid.    

Before This Wilderness Consumes US, in the end, is a decent, curious and gracious, but overwhelmingly diffuse, dispersive and lethargic album. It is very good for specific moments, especially if you want to relax completely alone, in a solitary confinement. Otherwise, you will hear it with genuine joy and enthusiasm, but this sentiments will gradually disappear, as the album evolves. Don’t get me wrong, this is a very good album, but fails to achieve a more salutary standard of excellence. 


​Wagner

progressive rock / post rock / experimental / alternative

Naegleria is an album released on October 12, by Greek instrumental progressive/post rock band Movement Of Static. Almost forty seven minutes long, the record has ten tracks: Slowlly We Are..., 57 084 INICIAL' 76 16 56 79, The Passage, 77 56 01 51 AGGRADACIYA 05 51 55 97, Mountain Of Life, 6EQUJ5, 80 516 GANOMATIT 21 23 86 25, Diaspasis, 93-882-NAIMINA-74-14-35-74 and ...Fading From Our Existence. An exceedingly authentic, sensational and creative post rock act, whose organic sound deeply penetrates and collides with the omniscient harmonies of its virulent, but consistent splendor, the melodies on this album seems to deliberately fluctuate between a groundbreaking serenity and a solitary aggressiveness, that anticipates the energy of a ferocious, but rational agony, with a formidable level of vitality, that completely dilacerates all the reticent labyrinths of its enigmatic and profuse restlessness. 

With a proficient elusiveness that concurs with the gentle, but somewhat abrasive spontaneity of its expansive sonorous nature, the music delivered in Naegleria is a virtuous and unexpected journey throughout the abysses of a diluted, but circumspect mordacity, that gradually reinvents in a liquid ocean of abstract sagacity the glorious elements of a dilated sentimental grace. At the innermost gravity of its surreal kingdoms of timeless rapture, some fabulous passages are almost meticulous studies on the flexible art of space, and its correlation within discreet undertones of placid tenacity and peripheral melodies of lugubrious elasticity; everything sidelined with ardent, but brightly philosophic guitar lines, that decipher in the nucleus of its impeccabilities a complex diagram of sensibilities, that aspire to be a wandering soul completely submerged in the vicinities of a long lost everlasting sadness. 

With a poetic and melancholic nature, that doesn’t surpass its vibrant and transcendental qualities, I should point it out that the name of the group – Movement of Static – basically describes their style: the music will make you feel stagnated in some distant horizon of the universe, but at the same time, the relentless motion that keeps the mind moving makes the listener to be aware of the life around him, as well as the life inside him. The lucidity suggested by their organic, but marvelously pretentious style makes you collide towards a universe stagnated, but euphorically in constant movement. The pungent lucidity of consciousness redirects the entire existential grace of an infinite dimension of majestic dormancy, that anxiously surpasses the pain of reality, marvelously engraved in the arid territory of dreams that recognizes the fragile grace of life as its main fuel.  

Although I wouldn’t qualify Naegleria as a masterful nor fantastic album, because some passages are – to a certain extent –, predictable and monotonous, the album gets very close of being classified as a masterpiece of the genre. With a natural fury, an organic atmosphere, a latent execration of ordinary musical parameters and a surreal level of originality, this album certainly deserves to be regarded as an exceptional work, abundant in systematic artistic virtuosity, and genuine musical development. 


​Wagner

progressive rock / post rock / experimental

Four Light Years from Home is an album released on October 1, by instrumental progressive rock group Across Seconds, from Mumbai, India. A very concise album, only thirty two minutes long, the record has seven tracks: Flow, T Minus 10, Astral Drift, Mayday, A Perfect World, Four Light Years from Home and Ebb. A very good, incisive album – despite the fact that, at least at first, there’s nothing too exceptional nor superb about it –, the group has an interesting sonorous dynamic. The songs are well created, and their general melodies are indeed very beautiful and pleasant to hear. You can appreciate this album without any fear. Despite some rude limitations, there is a sincere and organic plasma of genuine creativity here, that it’s definitely enjoyable and lucid.  

With generally slower and calmer harmonies, Four Light Years from Home has virtuous and solid melodies, that dance over the sonorous frontiers of its own cadences. With bold guitar lines – that, paradoxically, feels a little generic, following a pattern that definitely seems exhausted by the genre – the rhythms exhibit a general layout of passionate serenity, whose uncompromised sensibility virtually delivers innocently the proverbial tenacity of its ardent musical rules.     

With an intelligent sonorous mordacity that comprehends its own creative limitations, the expansive musical universe upon which the melodies display its vigorous potential for artistic dilution is exceedingly satisfactory, despite the fact that – on the rapturous density of its solitary continental calmness –, the group could have pushed their instinctive boundaries a little further beyond the line. Nevertheless, the constrained modest greatness of their creative ambitions definitely fit into their sensational colorful horizon of sweet melancholy, that waits for the sunset to arrive, before the departure of all the souls in the abyss. 

With interesting poetic elements that gracefully emphasize the generous kindness and delicacy of their music, Across Seconds definitely conceived Four Light Years from Home as a beautiful and touching work of art. One that you definitely will feel compelled to hear, several times. 


Wagner

post rock

Firn is an album released on September 7, by German post rock group cataya. Thirty-eight minutes long, the record has four long tracks: destiny, madera sagrada, vis-à-vis and ausblick. With a calmer style, and a plausible sonorous cosmogony whose greatest ambition is an overwhelming expansion on the vastness of serenity, firn is a very good, passionate and consistent album. If by one hand the sound can be perceived as generally conventional, on the other, the group definitely knows how to maintain a cohesive sonority, that displays a confident sagacity on the virtuosity of its simple, but graceful melodies. 

With a very clean sound, the music of cataya has an eloquent elegance, that is abundant on sensational harmonies and proverbially intense rhythms. Their technique is an elusive mixture of spontaneous density and synchronic precision, although the sound exasperates its cataclysmic proclivities in the boundaries of its eruptive oceans of sentimental disillusions. Despite the fact that there’s not a single element in their style that could be described as exceptional or surprising, a placid beauty emanates with subtlety from within the songs. It’s easy to be enchanted with a charming resonance that undertakes the sensibilities of its intonations, and cordially concedes them a life of their own.

While the album is, indeed, saturated with a great amount of commonalities inherent to the genre, and the band suffers from a lack of artistic grandiosity, there is a fantastic degree of beauty on the surface of the melodies. The group is – as a matter of fact – very competent and skilled in displaying with a certain conjuncture of qualities an interesting work within their genre of choice. The sincere delicacy they exhibit in their elegant sonority, standardized by the majestic devotion upon which they adorn their music, delivers an abundant grace that ostensibly drives the soul out of its natural limits.

I definitely think this work could be more playful and surprising, although I haven’t been disappointed at all; firn is not a bad album, on the contrary. Despite its restrictions and limitations, it’s a very good work, if you maintain your expectations low. cataya follows a more traditional and conventional style, but, nevertheless, they were successful in creating an interesting, reasonable and effective album. Enthusiasts of the genre will appreciate. firn will certainly please you, as long – as I wrote some lines above – you maintain realistic expectations. 



Wagner 

post rock

Fall Of The Moon is an album released on September 8, by Italian post rock group 42DE. Almost thirty-eight minutes long, the record has eight beautiful tracks: In Drama, Solitude, Interlude, Call Of The Giants, Creation Of Something Abstract, Magnitude, Submerge This World, Holy Rain and Dawn Of The Day. A very philosophic and imponderable work of art, the music of 42DE elaborates its own universe of stupor and splendor, throughout a miraculous synergy of melodic grace, that plays with its own aphorisms of poetic serenity, intensity and monumental calmness, upon which your soul is slowly diluted by the majestic vicinities of its marvelous sonorous indulgencies. 

All in all, the album is a fantastic allegory of brilliant creativity. The general harmonies are efficiently serene, and they transpire such a vapor of fragile, but infinite tranquility, that the marvelous intonations of the music instantly reverberates throughout the most precious sidelines of your soul. Despite the fact that the group follows a somewhat conventional pathway of the genre, there is no doubt they are exceedingly original, audacious and genuine, regardless of some musical restrictions.   

With revolving harmonies that dilacerates your perceptions, but at the same time, increasingly agitates the virtuosities of a consistent happiness, the style of 42DE is very elegant and sophisticated, and – all the way through –, Fall Of The Moon proves to be a splendid, singular and proverbial work of art. With masterfully created poetic overtones, that instills the omnipresence of a colossal universe of wonder at the heart of the listener, the album captures an ephemeral perception of beauty, that elevates an abundant and everlasting state of grace with its overwhelming placid sensibility. 

Despite the fact that I haven’t found the album to be a masterpiece, Fall Of The Moon is, as a matter of fact, a very intuitive, energizing and refreshing record. The group has a striking sense of creativity, can be described as categorically original, and knows how to genuinely surprise its audience. If you are a post rock enthusiast, you have to listen to this fantastic album. You will be positively astonished! 


Wagner 

post rock

For Better Of For Worse is an album by Swiss post rock group Leech, released on September 15. Almost fifty minutes long, the record has six very extensive tracks: Melide, Sure! Looks Real., Hell 8, Dirty Seconds, Arrete and Herbstmonster. A very beautiful, splendorous and fantastic album, with amazingly crafted and imponderable atmospheres, the work is a consecrating, lucid and vivacious anthem to infinity, that registers in the core of its creative and passionate ambitions a virtuous alliance between serenity, synergy, synchronism, majestic elegance and reverberating existential grace. Probably one of the most refined albums that I’ve ever heard in the genre, the group displays a unique and very singular style, that knows how to accommodate time and meticulously arrange space at the epicenter of exceedingly salutary and virtuous harmonies, as they expand, and aggregate entire universes of graceful sentimentality into the void of its melancholy.

With an introspective level of discreet ambivalence that works over its own colorful creative densities, Leech definitely embraces its own standards of voracious infinity, where the sound has no frontiers nor barriers to disrupt its waves. With a calmness that also seeks to create a natural balance between rhythm and melody, the sound agglomerates on the crest of its beauty a consistent, but robust and cohesive fragrance, that harmonizes the audacious tenacity of its technical elements in a zone of effective musical tonalities. Essentially, the creative sensibilities that comes out of this fabulous ordeal comprehends on the diagram of its fate the most sensitive path to execute with a majestic level of splendor its infuriatingly authentic perceptions of artistry.    
With such a singular degree of audacity, and an exceptional level of creativity that is formidably genuine, and runs through a new palace of creative cosmogonies, the music of Leech is simply a wonderful collision of splendorous galaxies of everlasting serenity, upon which conscience becomes relaxed, and devoid of all deceptions. Instantly fulfilled by a universe of marvelous sonorous interactions, your organic vitalities are converted into the most magnificent allegory of peace and tranquility, that could ever be transplanted into music. 

A magnificent album that greatly works in very introspective nuances the most elemental qualities of the genre, For Better Of For Worse is a wonderful state of the art work, that will dramatically change your perceptions about music. With the elaboration of a very peculiar and original harmonious galaxy that maintains the fundamental beauty of its axial sonorous diagram, Leech definitely creates a style of their own, and deserves to be recognized as one of the most consistent and unique exponents of post rock in the underground scene. 


Wagner 

post rock / math rock / indie

Sometimes post rock is slow, mentally burdensome and heavy, which is not a bad thing. It helps cleanse the soul and brighten the day. Yet, sometimes post rock comes to you with a smile on its face and invites you to a trip to the sunlit beach. This album by tide/edit belongs to the latter category.

The band hails from Manila. They formed in 2011, back then as a duo trying to enjoy themselves with instrumental music, inspired by acts like Mouse On The Keys, Earthmover and TTNG. In those days the band had no intention of playing live or recording a heap of albums, but things changed.

Gradually the band evolved into a quartet. A first EP was recorded, followed by two albums; 'All My Friends' is number three. It contains twelve tracks, each of them coming with a dash of sunlight and a blissful smile. The music of tide/edit is clean, gentle and sweet, void of heavily distorted guitars or eternally lingering post rock passages. I can hear elements from post rock, but just as much from math rock and jangling indie pop. Opener 'Pelagic' immediately showcases what this quartet stands for: hip shaking instrumental pop rock, mid tempo rhythms and playful guitars. Hell, in 'Twelve' I can even hear elements from Joy Division, but on a good, non-depressive day.  

When I close my eyes and focus on the places where I could see and hear this kind of music, I'm immediately transported to the always amazing Dunk festival. It's somewhere in the afternoon when hundreds of visitors gather around the forest stage to see these guys live. Shortly after they have kicked off, people are dancing in the woods, shaking their behinds and waving their arms. Undoubtedly this would be a massively entertaining experience. I'm damn sure that all in attendance will snap their fingers to the infectious tune 'Snappy' or float through time and space on 'To The Zoo'. But Dunk is still far away now so I suggest you check out this sweet and playful album. Perhaps let it guide you through the dark days of winter. Whatever you do, this will get you smiling again.


​Serge

progressive rock / post rock / shoegaze 

Spectra is the most recent album released by American progressive/ stoner/ shoegaze group Alone on the Moon, from Houston, Texas. Forty minutes long, the record has eleven tracks: Say Again, Scatterbrain-ed, Pool of Tears, Kings, Bishops, and Pawns, Bright Bite Wound, Some Day It'll All Go Dark, Suicitation,
Spectra, The Digger, Naked Lady Park and Small White Object. With gracious, diligent and strong guitar lines, that really incorporates the tenacity of its flexible and indulgent, but methodic and pungent musical elements, Spectra is a gracefully proverbial album, exceedingly technical to a certain degree, although without losing the quintessential volatilities of its monumental effervescent soul. 

The salutary creative provinces upon which the melodies easily flow seems to voluntarily depart from the vicinities of an infinite realm of innocent, intrinsic and spontaneous serenity, that persistently embrace the shadows of its sonorous descendant highlight. The style of the group is intelligent, vivacious and quite remarkable, for sure, and its strongest virtues are cohesively dense, expansive and abrasive guitar lines, that drags to the epicenter of its sentimental horizon the lugubrious hemisphere of a purely dimensional strategic space, that comprehends on the placid melodic reverberations of its titanic sonorous possibilities the ostensibly sensible, but lucid graciosity of an indefinite diagram of musically entangled vertical parameters, easily configured by the band.  

Unfortunately, the album presents some fragile issues, although they don’t compromise the general competence displayed in the work. The melodic variations are not strong nor distinctive enough to avoid a modest degree of monotony, and the general uniformity of the sound – added to its superb, but excessively disdainful level of musical technicalities – makes the album somewhat too predictable, sometimes resembling more a recorded guitar lesson than an actual art album. Nevertheless, I do have to say that the musical groundwork is beautiful, and Alone on the Moon has all the necessary qualities to surpass the current limitations presented by their latent, but stagnant style.  

Alone on the Moon is a band that concentrates an expressively sensible amount of talent; indeed, the group have a tremendous potential, that overlooks all of its relatively insignificant deficiencies. They just have to let their natural virtues flow out of their creative musical axis, and the magic will just naturally happen. They have to learn only not to worry so much about technical grievances. Besides that, they are very close to be qualified as the next marvelous act on the underground scene.  


Wagner 

post rock

Funeral Garden is an album released on August 18, by American post rock act Autumn Creatures. Very objective and concise – a little more than half an hour long –, the record has seven tracks: Absent Voice, Grove, Death In Silent Places, Mourn / Suffer, Carrier Wave, Meadow and Funeral Garden. A virtuous and poetic work, with exceedingly beautiful harmonies, that are its strongest qualities, the general musical layout of Autumn Creatures is proverbially dense and lugubrious, as well as intrinsically dramatic and sensible. Full of rich textures upon which the sound disintegrates itself in the ephemeral atmosphere of permanently diluted melodies, its highly introspective universe revolves around a majestic realm of pungent melancholy, enhanced by a stable layer of imponderable serenity.  

While the general calmness of the melodies prevail most of the time, there is an infamous and restless exasperation hidden within the boundaries of its most endurable and expressive layers, that confiscates over its infinite rhythmical dehydrated sonorous tonalities an imperial and definitive resolution for a despondent desolation. As the phantom of these repressed sentiments of dissolution and anger – whose shadows embraces the vitality of its deeply harmonious allegorical resentments – overflows towards a sensorial narrative of mostly elegiac sounds, the listener is entangled by a celestial wave of undisturbed serenity, that revolves around the soul of the sun of its own concentrated musical epiphanies, that can be quite expansive as well as paradoxically stagnant, at the same time.  

The melodies, in general, are very gentle and soft. The sonorous elegance is not only superficial, there is a volatile, but cohesive harmonious structure emanating from the oceanic sincerity of its musical hyperboles, that are gracefully aligned with its majestic principles of salutary greatness. While there is ambition on this work, it is restrained to a modest, but rapturous artistic honesty, whose fantastic abilities are pungently aligned to consolidate a masterly diligent and exponentially well-crafted work of art. 
 
While I cannot qualify Funeral Garden as a state of the art work – because certain passages are indebted to a moderate degree of monotony – definitely, this gigantic and splendorous album has all the necessary qualities to be a reference on the underground scene. This is such a fantastic work of monumental artistry, that its minor superficial deficiencies are not able to sustain any real damage nor compromise its formidable and placid musical consistency. 


Wagner