post rock

The year 1099 saw the Siege of Jerusalem during the First Crusade.  Pope Paschal II succeeds Pope Urban II, as the 160th pope. In the USA, Form 1099 is a much feared IRS tax form. In Norway, 1099 is an excellent post rock band that deserves a lot more attention than they got.

I first got acquainted with these instrumentalists through there immersive 'Young Pines' album back in 2015 (read). Now, they return with a brand new epos, one that almost got lost in the pile of albums to review. With 'Blindpassasjer' 1099 take their inspiring sound to new lengths.


With twelve songs, together creating a quite long album, 1099 take the usual elements from post rock acts like Mogwai, God Is An Astronaut and This Will Destroy You and strip them down to Alice In The Cities, Tortoise and Radare levels. The result is still a post rock album but one that flirts with jazz, Americana, western soundtracks and surf pop. Opener 'Silverdal' is a pure post rock tune and 'Tundra' is a pure post rock masterpiece but then there is 'Osiris', thriving on wind instruments and Moogs. It reminds me of Belgian act Condor Gruppe and I think that is a very good thing. It adds variation, plus it makes the whole thing suitable for both the cosy living room and the blasting festival speakers.

But we're not done there. 'Under Isen' takes the both dark jazz scene and The Shadows by the arm and invites them for a gloomy but immersive post-whatever jam session. By now, only four tracks into this album, I feel I'm getting angry. That doesn't often happen but suddenly it is there. It's an anger much like the ones I feel when there is injustice somewhere. I'm thinking "why aren't these guys playing the festivals? Why are they stuck in Norway?" I now feel like it's my duty to recommend them for Dunk! 2019. I am damn confident that they will awe and inspire heaps of people in Zottegem, much like I did with Spoiwo, Cecilia::Eyes and Radare. 'Blindpassasjer', the title track is a lust for the ear, brilliant in every note.

'For Seg Selv' also is utter brilliance, now digging deeper into the dark jazz scene than before. And with this one, I'm going to stop doing a song-by-song description. There are other stunning highlights to be found but I will leave those up to you to discover. In my time as a music reviewer I have been glorifying post rock bands like crazy. Many of them have ended up in my end-year lists and with 1099 I'm going a step further. This might not be the biggest or most popular post rock band in Europe but it is definitely one of the best. They showcase a ton of musical skills and experience. They showcase a neat playfulness while enchanting the listener with pure beauty.

Oh well, I guess you get the idea by now. Let's all move to an island together, away from the so-called civilized world and make the guys from 1099 our government. They deserve it. Now go buy that album.


​Serge

by Wagner

black metal

Storm Borrower is an EP released in mid-May by Slovenian atmospheric black metal project Veldes. Almost thirty-four minutes long, the work has three relatively extensive tracks: The Songless Forest, the title track, Storm Borrower and Where Rivers Turn To Ashes. With its genuinely poetic, gentle, reflexive and profound style, exceedingly philosophic and resigned in nature, Veldes has a very peculiar, insightful and dispersive outlook on atmospheric black metal, his genre of choice. 
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With singular and very expansive premises, basically sinister in nature – but that has its energy entirely concentrated on beautiful and melancholic melodies –, on this work, Veldes present to its audience three personal anthems of sad and dismissive, but peaceful majesty, that comes as one with the nature and the cosmogony of his restless mind. As an infinite lugubrious crisis that revolves around the epicenter of its own demise, the persistently serene, but profoundly pungent melodies present on Storm Borrower reveals an experienced and wisely skilled artist, that knows how to convert with dense precision all the sensitivities of his heart into a deeply elusive, giant and delicate sonorous art. Definitely, a work that elevates the genre into an entirely new standard of creative lucidity, highlighting the beautiful propensities of its fantastic qualities. 

black metal

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Foragt is a two songs EP released recently by Danish black metal project Angantyr. A little less than twelve minutes long, the record is very concise, with only two tracks – Foragt and Knækkede Knogler, Brækkede Ben – that brings back and rescues what raw black metal really is, and really should always sound like. With powerfully rude rhythms, vigorous and nervous intensity, tremendously sinister harmonies and an astoundingly rapid musical pace, the work is simple, objective and direct, but certainly has exponential qualities that lives up to the most ardent and crucial elements of the genre. Despite the fact that Foragt doesn’t present any innovations, the work compensates its lack of audacity executing and exhibiting with masterful precision one of the most relevant works on contemporary traditional black metal. While the conventional elements do prevail, the vast degree of loyalty the artist has to the genre is showcased in a very competent, decent, furious, dense and skilled musical labor, that presents at the genuine cohesion of its sonorous integrity the full comprehension of what black metal truly is, for real.  

black metal / avant garde

Echoes of the Past is an EP released in May by epic and atmospheric black metal group Kaatarakt, from Geneva, Switzerland. Twenty two minutes long, the record has five tracks: the title track, Echoes of the Past, The Gathering, Màttr Ok Megin, Little Troll's Tale and Sunless Dawn. With a formidable, gracious, colorful and brilliant perception of artistry, the high level of originality displayed by the group certainly is impressive. Breaking boundaries and virtually consecrating to all the diversifying components of their music a more majestic and imperially sensible degree of creativity, Kaatarakt works with a tremendously great capacity and synergy elements of symphonic, folk and Viking metal; and does that with such a confidence, that they wonderfully display in the sound a very singular style of their own. 
With furious guitar lines, but exceedingly poetic harmonies, that understands and conglomerates the palpable agitation of their vividly intuitive and agglutinating musical perceptions, Echoes of the Past is a wonderfully original, splendid and marvelously conceived musical work. Certainly, it’s has in abundance all the necessary qualities to captivate the attention of ardent enthusiasts of more genuinely avant-garde styles of metal. 

black metal

The Winter Silence is a four tracks EP, released by atmospheric black metal act Remete on May 18. Although extremely simple on its surface, and in the general display of its melancholic sensibility, the work is creatively conceived, and decently executed. Exploring deeply the greatest attributions of the genre, in a collision of imponderable vicissitudes upon which its harmonies dissipate throughout the blackness of a lost and lugubrious universe, The Winter Silence is a sonorous ode to spiritual loneliness and solitary desolation, almost a sacred, silent and discreet anthem to human obliteration on the vastness of infinity. A sentiment perfectly echoed by the second track – that can be described basically as an almost acoustic line of resigned affliction –, upon which the next track is like a heavier and dense continuation. A very interesting, calm and profoundly conceived work of art, that really understands and explores in a majorly creative fashion the most salutary qualities and devices of the genre, The Winter Silence definitely is a spectral lancination of fatidic void and intermittent anxiety, beautifully conceived at the height of a hallucinatory – but vividly sonorous and tense – dark realm of silent despair.    

post rock

Omina is the title of an EP released in the beginning of May by Italian post rock group Augure. Very concise, having only eighteen minutes, and three tracks – Grunesfeld, Eis and Tides Tale – the work has an elegant, sober, precise, expansive and lucid musical perception. Its harmonies display cohesion, intensity and emphatic graciosity, although at the same time a lethargic, tense and heavier sense of depressive anxiety seems to penetrate subtlety onto the voracious vitality of the harmonies, enticing to its latent and disruptive, but blurred designation of reality a melancholic principle, which is greater than what was initially conceived. Although the work is concise, it certainly gives a vast insight about the full potential of the group, which is certainly promising and, to a moderate degree, tremendously impeccable – at the least in their formidable level of technical proficiency – since the band incisively demonstrates that knows with plain authority what they are doing, and what they are capable of. 

black metal

Songs of Mourning is a three songs EP released by atmospheric black metal act Forlorn Citadel. A beautiful, very sinister and incisive EP, permeated by a dense, inescapable and furious – yet exceedingly subtle – atmosphere, the music, despite the echoes of its straightforward simplicity, has a consistent and profound anatomy, sidelined by the specter of peculiar and gracious harmonies. With a generally calmer and despondent melodic layout, almost somnolent at the contiguous and irreplaceable patience of its melancholy realm, Songs of Mourning lives by the height of its title, transmitting to the listener the sentiment of grief upon which its music softly relies. A pure, direct and simple, but gracefully conceived atmospheric BM EP, its precious qualities certainly revolves around the surreal macabre symphonies of its discreet grandiosity, that echoes on the peaceful harmonies of its somewhat restless dissidence the oblivious diligence of its musical twilight.          

black metal

With amazingly great, ascendant and sober guitar lines, and exceedingly impulsive, rational and flexible, but wonderfully delineated melodies, Cult of a Dying Sun is an album released by American black metal act Uada, on May 25. Almost one hour of sinister and grotesquely insane harmonies – that conspicuously guides the listener into the descending blackness of an agonizing realm of emptiness, despair and loneliness – Uada has a tremendously vigorous, impulsive and surreal degree of originality, which encompasses an elaborate sense of timing, and marvelously written melodies, impeccably executed at the dense ordeal of its ferocious twilight of irrevocable abominations. 
The sagacity of their direct style can be described as rejuvenating, intense and astoundingly lucid, being permeated by the logic of a dense and fresh tenacity, that embellishes the ostensibly voracious and antagonizing sonorous perception dispersed by the group’s sophisticated technique. Being a primordially poetic, melancholic and intense artistic milestone from the beginning until its conclusion, Cult of a Dying Sun certainly deserves to be highlighted as one of the most excruciatingly pleasant, elaborated, authentic and elemental black metal records of the year.   

ambient / drone / post rock

Nineteen minutes long, having four tracks – Induction, Displacement, Awareness and Realization – Induction is an EP released by a musician from India, which presents himself by the nom de plume of Phet. With elusive and melancholic harmonies that incisively transpose the epicenter of evasively somber textures and densely consecrated harmonies, the lurid walls of sound created by the artist are consistently dense, sober and almost palpable. With a rich and colorful conjuncture of melodies that obey what appears to be an ascendant logic of greatly punctuated resonances, the general musical layer found in Induction is simple, but brilliantly conceived and executed. With a deliberate convergence of elements that ably works altogether to dilapidate the genre, and achieve the best result possible, Phet masters the glorious lucidity of a singular style that circulates within the sensibility of its own apex. Wonderfully achieving a full creative labor that definitely has understood the anatomy of its sonorous principles, Phet has proved with this concise, but impactful EP, that he certainly has what it takes to be a major reference in the underground scene.    




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Selection and reviews by Wagner

post rock

Let Nature Take Its Course is an album released on June 1st, by Russian post rock group Human Factor. A very calm, dense and intense post rock album, with exceedingly vivid and colorful harmonies, the group amazingly impresses its audience by the subtle nature of its gracefully gentle, pure and sagacious melodies, that displays a formidable dynamic between the harmonies of its proverbial, but serene musical intonations, and the calmer diligence of its rhythmic elegance. With a graceful and imperative style, that outstands itself by the lucidity of its musical graciosity, despite some irrelevant level of predictability – that does not compromise the gloriously professional and cohesive level of musicality of the group at all – Human Factor really has conceived Let Nature Take Its Course as an amazing and marvelous masterpiece, exploring wisely, at the height of its gracious and magnificent splendor, the most significant and genuine qualities of post rock, absorbing in their creative input the irrevocable simplicity of a primordially sensible work of majestic artistry. 

Almost fifty-three minutes long, the record has eight tracks: Longyear, A.L.F., 1816, Lake Of Solitude, Touch Of Chixculub, Alarm #1202, Red Shift and Nubo Vetera Promesas Pluvon. With a sensitivity that passes on through the salutary boundaries of the harmonies, the expressive and almost transcendental calmness ingeniously conceived by such wonderfully cohesive melodies has the power to transport the listener to a more meaningful and fantastic dimension of splendidly infinite and dispersive sonorous elements, where absolutely everything responds to the sensitivity of the human nature in a more grateful and intense atmosphere. 

A very beautiful album, that definitely has improved the standards for the genre in a very drastic, almost hyperbolic musical tenacity, Let Nature Take Its Course is a gracefully ordained and linear – but impressively surreal – allegory of infinity, since you can almost feel the vastness of the universe flowing everywhere, through your veins, through your dreams, through your life, at the most ardent and imperative sentences of the music, that recues from the limits of its sonorous insurgencies the true elements of a real conception of artistry. 

Don’t get me wrong, the album is not perfect, and has its fair share of monotony – mainly at the passages in the middle of the album where its harmonies gets dangerously close to progressive rock – but they are too little to compromise the elegance and the profound grandiosity of the work, so they don’t deserve in fact a meaningful mention. My final evaluation on Let Nature Take Its Course is the best possible: this is a terrific, splendid and very original post rock album, that works creatively in a very authentic disposition the greatest attributions of the genre, giving to its audience a gracefully significant and consistent state of the art work. 
  

Wagner

post rock

When you take the time and effort to properly look at it, this ball of molten iron, mud and fleshbags like us, you will notice that is a pretty baffling place. Before we humans even arrived on the scene, the earth has been floating through space, sometimes being flat, sometimes being testicle shaped. It has seen countless of evolutions and extinctions. It has seen the dinosaurs being wiped out by a massive comet, resulting in an explosion of frogs and eventually mammals. Then homo sapiens arrived on the scene, which resulted in some more extinctions, like the Neanderthals or the mammoths. We're such a naughty little race, aren't we? Luckily, one day, mother earth will get sick of us too.

But in the meantime, we might as well enjoy all the beauty and splendor the human mind can generate. I mean, we are a murderous, ego-centric and intolerable bunch of assholes that severely harm our own environment like some sort of virus, but you tell me, can a virus create awe inspiring art? Can a virus pick up an instrument and enchant hundreds if not thousands of people? Only people can create, improve and evolve these abstract and symbolic things, and some of us, including Wanheda, are bloody good at it.

Wanheda is a band from Leuven, Belgium, inspired by how mankind has been affecting the earth. They don't see the rise of mankind as something positive and instead nostalgically look back to the glory days of mother nature with its gigantic insects and enormous reptiles. They do it with a dreamy and melancholic blend of post rock, progressive rock and a hint of post metal. 'The Cenozoic Implosion' contains five vintage post rock anthems, all equally narrative and gloomy. Fans of everything Explosions, Astronaut and Mogwai will adore a track like 'Luminous'.

'The Gathering Of One' is the only track with vocals, a spoken word lecture on our mutual behaviour. It's also the most experimental and progressive rock inspired song. The rest is purely instrumental, written with a solid background in post rock know-how. I think it's pretty obvious that I can imagine these guys playing on Dunk! festival. This is a classic Dunk! band who have a bunch of excellent tunes as business cards. My favorite is probably closer 'The Fissures of Humanity' but I'm sure every post rock fan will appreciate this.


Serge

I already received plenty of these neat collector items, so many that I must have missed some over the course of time. So, in a way of both making up to that and to support a hard working quality label, I decided to combine a bunch of their releases into one big Brieviews special. I guess the word "ambient" will appear quite often on this page, which obviously is another reason why I like this label so much. 

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Written by Serge

post rock

Myra is an album released on May 31, by Norwegian post rock group Spurv. Fifty one minutes long, the record has eight tracks: et løfte i fall, og ny skog bæres frem, fra dypet under stenen, hviler bekkenes sang, et blekt lys lyder, fra myrtempelet, den gamles stemme brister and allting får sin ende, også natten. A very calm, idyllic, beautiful album, with serene and philosophic, but ardently pungent harmonies, that embrace together the firm vitality of a sober river of intense melodies that swiftly flow throughout the sensitive ocean of a colorful eternity, the music of Spurv is an everlasting dream of sonorous allegiance between sensitivity and glory, a meritorious – but somewhat fugacious – celebration of simple, but exceedingly expansive, vividly vibrating and lucid symphonies of living realities. 

Although their style is simple, the music is spontaneously organic, and each and every track appears to have a diffuse conscience of its own. Revolving around soft nuances that celebrate the possibilities of its creative and subtle sonorous design, Myra is a sensational and deeply inspirational voyage throughout the cracked dissidences of our own dilated perceptions. The singular notion of artistry within the group certainly has created a universe of sound upon which conscience can relax and travel as a completely autonomous entity, free to wander in a sonorous ocean of splendor, destined to be converted to dust soon afterwards. 

Despite the fact that there is nothing primordially different on this work, at least compared to other albums of the genre, Spurv outstands itself by an interesting degree of originality, that exhibits a graceful authenticity subtlety exposed in the miraculous beauty and elegance present in the consistent shape and uniformity of its sound. The textures and the symmetry of the sound is pure, but sophisticated, and intelligently devised, and its flexible, but cohesive harmonies unravel a sagacious creativity that deserves to be highlighted by the genuine strength of its style. 

Myra is a very good album. Although I must emphasize the fact that this work will hardly impress experienced enthusiasts of the genre, there is enough qualities on this album to appreciate in its entirety its proficient and surreal majesty, that makes the abysses of conscience travel throughout the most splendid spheres of existence.      


Wagner

post rock

Premonition is an album released on May 27 by French post rock act First Came The Shadow. A relatively concise album, the record has five tracks: the title track, Premonition, Quiet victory, What keeps us apart is only spacetime, How do you want to be reminded? and Escaping causality. A gracious, pungent and beautiful album — enthralled with a sensibility that brings back the simplicity of harmonies within the genre —, Premonition is a vigorous and vivid musical symphony, with peaceful melodies that corresponds directly to the soul of the audience, in an ambient mood that subsidizes a clear resurgence of delicacy, that wanders around the spirit of the universe that sleeps in our emotional sensitivity. 

The tranquility and the modesty that circulates within these simple melodies reveal a lucid grace that cradles the loneliness of the soul. Perfect for solitary moments, the ludic arrangements and the overall melodies — that somewhat manages to be as extravagant on the range of its consistency as direct and simple as possible on the verge of its sonorous anatomy — present in Premonition are quite elegant and vibrant, sensational and sensible, in the context of its elemental nature, as well as in the virtues of its monumental expansion, intelligently playing with the emotional balance of our soul seeds, building on the placidity of its light a fundamental antagonism that filters on the rhythm the twilight of its own creative axis.  

A very good album that masterly comprehends and vividly exposes the real consistence of the genre without being redundant, Premonition elucidates the predisposition and the objectives of its own sense of artistry, revealing in the process the sincerity of its musical nature, where the basic harmonies guide general sensibilities, until they disperse in a surreal ocean of melodies, that dilates in the axis of its stupor the majestic splendor of a constrained, but conscious rapture.    

Despite the fact that the record has its share of predictability, the style of the group sounds genuine and independently creative. Although exceedingly rooted in the basic premises of the genre, Premonition has revealed itself a vigorous musical coalition, that certainly deserves appreciation. With a lot of interesting elements to aggregate, as well as enough strength to showcase a vast degree of innovation and authenticity, First Came The Shadow is an interesting act, with enough fuel to display its graceful artistry. 



Wagner

post rock

I opened my previous review by reminiscing about Dunk! festival. I'm still completely in that festival mood so it's probably no surprise that I picked a former Dunk! highlight for my next review. In 2017, this Norwegian act enchanted many people with their musical magic. Now they return with a breathtaking album, titled 'Myra'. For this album, they cooperated with members from Moe and Ulver. It's a big step since their highly acclaimed 'Skarntyde' album, and probably a big challenge too. I mean, how are you going to top yourself. How are you going to prove that you improved as a band, as songwriters, as magicians?

Well, apparently by creating an album that takes epicness to new levels. It all begins calm and drony with the intro 'Et Løfte I Fall' before 'Og Ny Skog Bæres Frem' opens all registers. With enigmatic post rock soundscapes and a raw blast of energy coming from the drums, this thing definitely kicks off in style. Soon into the record I'm reminded of a mix between A Swarm Of the Sun, Tiny Fingers and 65DaysOfStatic, something which I guess is not bad. Besides, they band simply pushes that drive forward in 'Fra Dypet Under Stenen'.

By now I'm thinking, "this kind of post rock can only be made in Norway". I mean, there is hardly a trace of black metal to be found here but somehow the music on 'Myre' carries a similar atmosphere, one of elaborate snowy mountains and mysterious forests. 'Hviler Bekkenes Sang', a brilliant ambient breather perfectly illustrates that. I see that I'm once again going into a song-by-song thing so I'll skip a few tracks. I mean, I have to leave some of the discovery up to you. All I'm going to say is that, like most of this album, 'Den Gamles Stemme Brister' is an absolute post rock masterpiece. 

And I'll end my review like I started it, reminiscing about Dunk! festival. On the table in front of me is a paper with all kinds of band written on it. It's my preparation for my "nostradamic Dunk! preview". I think I'm going to add Spurv to that list. I'm definitely going to add Spurv to that list...


​Serge

post rock

Tarfala is an album released on May 18, by Swedish post rock group Pershagen. A more concise and objective work, the record is forty two minutes long, and has eight tracks: Intro, Det du söker finns inte här, Det var ljust när vi började, Kaffedalen, Tarfala, Tundran (I), Tundran (II) and En dag ska vi alla härifrån. A very beautiful album with deeply organic and salutary melodies, ostensibly natural, as well as logically sensible, Tarfala can be described as a simple, but aggrandizing and surreal album, that has on the inventiveness of its unambitious strength the realities of vivacious and profoundly mordacious melodies. 

A cool and audacious post rock with an elevating mixture of psychedelic rock, Pershagen presents on this album a stylistically efficient symbiosis of genres, that culminates in an extraordinary colorful work. With great transcendental waves of harmonious tonalities of dream-like eruptive soundscapes, the overall sound of Pershagen is calm, serene, enjoyable, objectively lucid and inspiringly lovable. With a bright and touching delicacy that oversees the sincere fragility and the fraternal solidarity of the human nature brilliantly transposed into music, Tarfala is a symphony of overwhelming audacity, whose elegant beauty converges to a technical resurgence of simple grandiosity, which appears to explore the precious intensity its sound deliberately disperses and conglomerates around its own vortex. 

With deep cutting guitar lines, that at the same time displays a sensitive warm that realistically comprehends the subjective cycles imposed swiftly over its own harmonies, undoubtedly Pershagen competently creates with a great amount of authenticity and talent a solid layer of passionate musical density on Tarfala; with an engraving, innovative and inventive mixture of intricate notes, intonations and combinations notoriously reminiscent of psychedelic rock, the elusive nature of the group’s music certainly amounts to peculiar characterizations, that make their sound easy to be described as a fresh, vigorous and contemporary version of seventy’s acid rock, although with a very singular premise attached to its personal degree of artistry.     

Despite its very pleasant and creative nature, the deeply ethereal atmospheric musicality of the record would appeal widely to an audience who are already enthusiast of the genre; certainly will sound monotonous to people strange to this style in particular. Nevertheless, Tarfala is a lovable album that displays a formidable range of creative and technical skills, sidelined with a prudent level of audacious, successful and moderate experimentation. A work of genuine vivacity, that certainly deserves to be hugely highlighted.       


Wagner

post rock

Intérprete del Espacio is an album released on May 18th, by Spanish post rock project Ciempiés. A very concise, but relatively impactful work, only thirty-two minutes long, the record has six tracks: Telépata, Antigravedad, Intérprete del Espacio, Primaria, Yuigon and Transformación. With the serenity and the calmness typical of the genre, this album has a dense, but soft, pragmatic and disruptive atmosphere, that plays on the persistence of harmonies, to exhibit a sense of disclosure, that is evident to its sincere and essentially illusive pattern of overwhelming and crystalline tranquility.  

With lucid harmonies that anticipates the aggrandizing enigma of its own salutary and contiguous conscience, Intérprete del Espacio is a simple, yet expansive album, that tries to create an objective personification of sensitive insinuations inside the mind of the listener, in a free zone of creatively breathtaking despondencies, where absolutely every sound the universe has ever preserved into its abysmal secrecies is being slowly misconstrued as a new paradigm of evolutionary splendor. 

The beauty of this album is principally centered on the subtlety of its aesthetic features, that discreetly insinuates itself over the horizons of a prominent harmonious density, perfectly evaluating at the onset of its own perceptive nuances the comprehension of its elemental significance. Prominently an unambitious album that vividly relocates at the epicenter of its own sonorous allegories the simplicity of a pure stylistic nature, Intérprete del Espacio has a very characteristic style, that evokes in a modest fashion the grandiosity of the genre, in a sincerely innocent mode. 

Although, by one hand there is nothing spectacularly groundbreaking about this album, its overall simplicity is deeply fascinating, and the sincere fragility exposed on the ambivalent cataclysm of its darkest notes denotes a rude, but intermittent melancholy, that slowly displays a latent lethargy, whose inspiring symphony vividly creates a soft world of ethereal delicacy, where absolutely everything is felt beyond the undermining visibility of its sonorous colors. 


Wagner