post rock / post metal

Earlier this month, I published a few wishful predictions for Dunk! Fest 2020 (read). Belgian post rock/metal combo Turpentine Valley were mentioned in there and somehow I feel like that was a little spoiler. I mean, there is no way that Turpentine Valley are not going to occupy the stage in Zottegem. Here is why:
1. Their new album is released by Dunk! Records. 2. They're from Zulte, only 31 kilometers from the sacred festival grounds.
3. Their music will be featured on 'De Twaalf', a new Flemish fiction series on één. 
4. 'Etch' is a smasher, containing tracks that will easily immerse and overwhelm the crowd. 

Which is all good and well, but how does this album sound exactly? Well, if you look at their facebook page, you'll quickly notice that Russian Circles is one of their major influences. Deftones and If These Trees Could Talk are also in that list. So you can expect some rolling bass, a busload of grooving riffs and an atmosphere to float on. It all begins rather carefully in 'Abrupt', which gradually tries to lure the listener in. If that doesn't work, 'Compromis' will probably do the trick, driving on intensity and impressiveness. From there, the band rages on with an ever pulsating blend of post rock and post metal.

​The short intermezzo 'Ballast' is oddly enough one of my favorites here, but I'm a dark ambient fan so that's quite natural. It mostly serves as an intro for the sonic bulldozer 'Vergeten'. These are riffs that will grind an audience to pulp, combined with a gritty atmosphere, doomed out rhythms and gloomy guitar-scapes. Like I said before, top shelf Dunk! material, no doubt about that. 'Trauma' is perhaps the most representative for Turpentine Valley: meticulously composed post metal, adding tiny licks of alternative rock and kneading it into a post metal statement, or monument, if you will. 

In the beginning of the album, I thought this was a decent, interesting debut, but halfway through 'Trauma' I'm blown away by not only the sheer intensity but also the technical aspects of the whole thing. And that's not just me. My wife just said "dat is een debuut of wat? Fucking hell"! I'm not going to translate that. Guys from Zulte will understand. Anyway, while the equally strong 'Compassie' rolls through my speakers, I can only recommend this beauty to all you post metal fans out there. Yes, this is only a debut, which obviously means that the stakes are high. Turpentine Valley are here to dominate the post-scene...


​Serge

post rock

Vaudlow is the debut album of an eponymous American post rock band, from Nashville, Tennessee, released in November 1. Thirty-six minutes long, the record has seven tracks: 1) The Counterpart; 2) This Could Be Ours; 3) Mend; 4) Chorale; 5) Maeror Meus; 6) Blue Desolate; 7) Obliviate; with beautiful, calm and dense harmonies, the style of the group is absolutely typical post-rock, though at times they incorporate with graceful subtlety some elements of progressive rock. There is nothing on this album that you haven't heard a hundred times before in other works of the genre; nevertheless, there is enough creative and technical competence present in Vaudlow to make the listening of this album a mandatory task. 

With a superb melodic proficiency — and moderate, cohesive harmonies —, the musical tonalities fluctuates above the groundbreaking devices of its flexible anatomy. The serene atmospheres conceived by the generally consistent musical standards of the group definitely collaborates to make their graciously resonating sonorous modulations a marvelous sensitive experience, whose protuberating calmness is occasionally disrupted by exceedingly audacious and diluted dispersive reverberations, that always converge to an ocean of abundant and delightful serenity. 

Of course, don't get me wrong; sometimes, the music gets ostensibly predictable, like I've pointed out some lines above. Nevertheless, this fact
does not diminish the graceful epic beauty of the magnificent grandiloquent style delivered by the group. The sound has a powerful and genuine virtuosity — that is felt primarily by the gentle grasp of the harmonies' discreet tonalities —, that slowly articulates the warm existential disintegration of its gracefully melodic features, over the benevolent cosmogony of a dense , placid and diffusive musical nature.  

Generally speaking, the eponymous  debut album of Vaudlow is a very graceful and diligent work of art, despite the fact that the sound resents itself of some stylistic sonorous limitations. Revealing a consistent and cohesive musical group, whose talents are flexible enough to dilapidate — initially in a moderate and restricted context — a new creative conjuncture to the genre, Vaudlow doesn't disappoint. 

With their beautiful harmonies, salutary sensibility and a strict adherence to the general guidelines of post rock, this debut album certainly has enough qualities to be appreciated by enthusiastic audiences. While you cannot expect anything too extraordinary to come out of it, undoubtedly you will find abundant, formidable, deeply humane beauty, in each note played, in all these amazing tracks. Vaudlow will amuse you with remarkable moments of majestic and everlasting serenity. 


Wagner

post rock / progressive

There are some bands who definitely state their idea of music within the name itself. The Kompressor Experiment from Switzerland is one of these bands, with a name that is partially German and English, even though Kompressor is only spelled a little differently. Nevertheless, what is a Kompressor Experiment? Are they experimenting with compressing air or rather – are they trying to push a lot of ideas into a record? 

Well, the Sion-based quartet shows with the title and cover of their new record already which musical concept they are following: “2001” – more than a nod to Kubrick’s famous science-fiction classic – is a record that is as much influenced by movies as it is (seemingly) following bands like Tides from Nebula, Cinematic Orchestra or Oh, Hiroshima. The record is pure post-rock but with a lot of sounds seemingly straight from the modern movie alphabet. The cover is like a scene from Gravity with one astronaut apparently lost in space hanging on to the thin air tube for dear life.

“EMP.AI” is a good example for the cinematic aspect of the record as the track follows a long winding road through America’s Monument Valley with a lot of dust being whirled up because of a long trail of horses following a single rider trying to escape the attack of the wild west gang behind him. Or it is an astronaut finding himself in a sandstorm on Mars – both ideas are being promoted by the western-like, sandy sound of the guitar which purrs like taken from a Sergio Leone – movie. 

However, there is more to “2001”; the band is capable of playing crunching and gut-wrenching riffs, especially “Monolith I” (a kind of non-linear triptych on the album) is able to show real force and power and to combine all of the band’s ideas and motifs. The beginning could be a soundtrack to a new science-fiction movie with all its industrial synthesizer-like sounds – resembling the engine of a spaceship slowly passing by – opening the album before a strong, powerful riff kicks in and leads the track into a futuristic wasteland scenario. 

The three longtracks are not always nicely balanced, some parts may be a bit long – to use a movie-like comparison: Not all movies are one-shots. Nevertheless, by and large, the band really shows a lot of promising ideas and blends them into a more than solid post-rock record with a strong concept and a lot of nicely ambiguous details.


​Thorsten

post rock

Home is an album released by Greek progressive rock project we.own.the.sky, released on November 1. Almost forty-five minutes long, the album has nine tracks: 1) First Breath; 2) Ikigai; 3) We Align; 4) Of New Beginnings; 5) Youth; 6) Coexist; 7) Heavy Heart; 8) This Space Between Us; 9) Akai Ito; with very cohesive and modestly restrained melodies, Home manages to be a salutary and dense musical undertaking, though in a general evaluation, the work doesn't bring anything new to the front. Nevertheless, the musical competence and the technical abilities displayed by the band are exceptionally remarkable, at least within the boundaries of their objective and somewhat dynamic creative proficiency. 

With linear and somewhat predictable melodies, that definitely conceives a relentless, dense, uneasy, protuberant universe entirely made of sound, Home delivers a salutary measure of technical intricacies correctly inserted into the more serene periphery of the creative strength of the music. With an established sonorous identity that inadvertently seeks the cosmogony of its own functional dynamic splendor, the music present on this album is quite vivid and fluid, though the guidelines of its harmonies are basically the ordinary features inherent to the genre's structure. So, while the album manages to satisfy expectations, on the other hand, the listener will hardly be impressed. 

we.own.the.sky certainly is one of the leading progressive rock acts of the underground scene nowadays. They know how to properly conceive fabulous melodies, and turn them into spectacular symphonies of dissonant splendor, that floats from the soul of their expressive artistry directly into the distant realm of vivacious dreams that delineates their fugacious portraits of melancholy. If you ignore the more sentimental passages — and I'm not saying that they are not beautiful — and the general limitations upon which the genre vastly resents, Home manages to be a satisfactory album.  

With decent harmonies, a spectacular style and an excellent musical layout, Home is an album that deserves to be appreciated. Quite remarkable at times — displaying exceedingly protuberant and abrasive guitar lines —, the record is a graciously conceived and envisioned work of art, at least in a technical point of view. Despite the fact that Home strongly resents itself from the predictable commonalities of the genre, with a few select passages being overtly generic to a certain extent, there is genuine dedication, pungent strength and a sonorous identity cohesive enough to make this album worthy of attention. 


Wagner

post rock

Arka Morgana — probably a pun on Fata Morgana — is an album released by Australian post rock band Myriad Drone, on October 18. Fifty-one minutes long, the record has eight tracks: 1) Time Enough at Last; 2) Vitreous; 3) Arka Morgana; 4) Please, Stand by..; 5) Atonement; 6) All Roads Lead; 7) Disguidance; 8) Unrequited; with a soft, but at the same time abrasive and lucid style, Arka Morgana is a remarkable album, that displays exceedingly marvelous and graceful melodies. With a sensible, but diluted musical layout, the lyrical cosmogony and the tender atmosphere of the harmonies define a new level of creative impeccability and overwhelming originality, that has all the proverbial means to captivate the listener immediately. 

With a powerful musical flexibility, that reveals a genuine desire to entirely supplant the general boundaries and the ordinary commonalities of the genre, Myriad Drone displays an effusively aggrandizing, placid and fulfilling musical style, that revolves around the colorful uniqueness of its hyperbolic diffuse tenderness, wich each song having its own particular density and atmosphere. While the first two tracks — Time Enough at Last and Vitreous — are spectacularly wonderful, but amazingly slow, the third, the title track Arka Morgana, is absolutely intense and astonishingly heavier, revealing an acute abrasiveness that gradually, almost imperceptibly, decreases to a central and serene depondency. The flexible, exceedingly vivacious layers of the musical diagram that floats through the sonorous possibilities generated by the cohesively creative splendor of the group's dynamic style definitely displays a very organic degree of audacious originality into the harmonies; the ostensibly creative elegance, and the concomitantly structural temperance that characterizes Arka Morgana in its entirety, certainly qualifies the album as one of the best ever conceived in the history of the genre. 

With the solid predominance of beautiful harmonies — and a splendorous style that can only be described as vivaciously graceful and ambitiously authentic —, the music of Myriad Drone is a salutary exhibition of intuitive sonorous sensibility. From start to finish, the album is a succession of harmonies as marvelously graceful as they are intensely precise, with melodies twitching to exhaling in the lonely peripheries of the human soul the formidable atmosphere of its ascending serene horizon of absolute majesty and everlasting rapture. Displaying such an aggrandizing musical sensitivity without any major creative nor technical deficiencies, Arka Morgana reveals itself as one of the best releases of the year. 

With incredibly elusive and transcendental melodies, Arka Morgana is an almost perfect musical accomplishment, that reveals an impressive convergence of talents, that can be rarely combined altogether to produce such a spectacular result. Displaying a sober and cohesive, but at the same time expansive and dynamic musical diagram — that can be expressively elongated according to the creative possibilities defined by the band —, Myriad Drone not only deliver on this album a fantastic group of symphonies whose marvelous dissonances present a whole different perspective into the general artistry attributed to the genre, but also reveals a distinctive, dispersive, melancholic greatness, that beautifies the reason behind its vigorous and energetic melodic vivacity. Definitely, Arka Morgana is a sensationally wonderful, groundbreaking album, that has all the necessary virtues to be placed as a landmark in the history of the genre.   


Wagner

post rock

Paradox is an album released in October 5, by French post rock group Cosmos. Very extensive — sixty-five minutes long —, the record has ten tracks: 1) Mirage; 2) Sandstorm; 3) Chrysalis; 4) Spacediving; 5) Abyss and Solar Paradox; 6) Ancestra; 7) Spirit of the Valley; 8) Erised; 9) Atreyu; 10) Wild Winter Roaring; with a deeply intense atmosphere, and a resonant, though moderately restrained musical layout, Paradox reveals itself an exceptionally dense and colorful album, that displays a sober versatility, without renouncing to an ambitious degree of originality. With melodies that pulsates on the verge of its intricate and gracious harmonious atmosphere, unfortunately the album eventually resents itself from the limitations inherent to the genre.  

Despite the fact that Paradox displays the musical commonalities inherent to post rock, the sound nevertheless manages to be flexible, fascinating and ostensibly genuine, at least to a certain point. The heavy and abrasive, but at the same time diluted guitar lines conceives an atmosphere of dispersive splendor, that manages to filter the introspective tendencies of the harmonies, fluctuating above the vicinities of its own fugacious and hyperbolic sonorous anatomy. 

With overlapping sound waves whose serene and tender calmness generally seeks the contingence of its despondent melodic expansion, Paradox push the boundaries of its lenient and pristine style over the lugubrious edge of its ambitious instrumental narrative, though sometimes the restless configuration of its musical distension doesn't respond easily to its homogeneous rhythmic tonalities. Unfortunately, the group's dissonant uniform tendencies hinder the work a little, since 
— just before halfway through the album — monotony starts to become quite a sensible feature within the music, and the sound efficiency hardly recovers from the predictable nature of the melodies. On the contrary, some tracks are so similar to each other that you came under the impression that you are listening to the same music over and over again. 

Nevertheless, Paradox is not a bad album, its sound is just too homogeneous most of the time; the technical competence displayed by the musicians are exceedingly wonderful, they certainly know what they are precisely trying to achieve. Unfortunately, sometimes they just lack the essence, vitality and soul to go a little beyond their horizon of creative possibilities. Anyway, the album manages to be satisfactory enough to be appreciated by its salutary virtues, at least to a certain extent. Undoubtedly, Paradox reveals the potential of a very skilled band, that has all the necessary qualities to overcome artistic boundaries and barriers in future releases. 


Wagner

progressive rock / post rock / experimental

bandcamp

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

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

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

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

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


Wagner

metalcore

Donetsk is usually known for its coal, maybe also for its football club. Or the war in Eastern Ukraine, but can you name a metal band from there? Probably no, but there is one now, Jinjer. The band around Tatiana Shmayluk will please all fans of bands like Walls of Jericho or Arch Enemy because they definitely got all the trademarks necessary for being successful in the scene. 
​
Their sound is state of the art, the drums energize the songs up to full max, the breaks for the clean parts are well-placed and the vocals easily change seamlessly from growling to immaculate singing. The band is able to incorporate some surprises like the piano-part in “Retrospection” or the jigging off-beat beginning of “Judgement (and Punishment)” hopping along to Tatiana’s lyrics. But the latter also present the one flaw in the Jinjer-puzzle, they are a bit too genre-like; for example the lyrics to the opener “On the Top” with its first glorification of the individual strife for greatness and success and the turn to a criticism of the same. “Retrospection” definitely has the most intriguing lyrics as the beginning is sung in Russian and English with the English parts talking about the wish to return to the family safe haven – the Russian parts make the English screaming much more believable. Nonetheless, genre fans will surely be very pleased with the first band they know from Donetsk, Ukraine.

doom

“From the darkness comes the light” - a programmatic sentence for Karyn Crisis and her project with husband/Ephel Duath-mastermind Davide Tiso, gloomy sunrises dominate this record. The voice of former NYHC band Crisis has been working with the Italian metal guitarists for several years having released an album in 2015. Now, four years later, they return with a new LP and its 12 songs show a lot of different sides of the duo accompanied by Fabian Vestod (Skinlab) on drums. 
The songs have a certain groove and grow on the listener but they mostly feed off of the energy spread by Karyn’s voice. It is audible that she has been singing for nearly 30 years with a longer break after the end of Crisis in 2004. Since then she has discovered her spirituality and even taught people in order to get in touch with that side of themselves and in some strange ways that can be heard. Very often she uses her strong voice to seduce us, to connect with our third eye.
Listening to Karyn is like watching a black and white movie of a medicine woman with some blue flames flickering before an old Chevy standing at the top of a long canyon with the black gorge looming in the deep. An image one cannot take the eyes off just like one doesn’t want Karyn to stop from lullabyeing. 
Her husband doesn’t overplay his musical abilities he rather uses all his prowess to sustain his wife’s magical abilities. You will find a wide range of dynamics and guitar work on “Covenant” – from doomy riffs to minuscule guitar pickings painting red moons over Karyn’s old Chevy and the black canyon.

post rock

Mountain men mambo. Caveman cha-cha-cha. Those stupid terms can hardly be used more adequately than when describing Törzs’ new album, with a wink of an eye. Why? Later, for now let’s talk about the music itself. 
There is something about this record that resonates inside as much as outside. The reverb on the record is probably as much a derelict of the band’s roots in shoegaze as to the idea behind it. The songs follow a motif of clarity that is also reflected in the change to a purely instrumental band with this release letting go of vocals for better. The Hungarian outfit is able to paint a wholesome picture of deserts around huge mountains without snow-capped tops, of long and winding roads through the Hungarian vastness outside the metropolis. Sometimes the temperatures drop because of the chilling slowness of some riffs and licks (“Hamarlik”) and sometimes the heat rises by the minute because of the jazzy vibrato of the drums (“Ötodik”). Jazz, that is definitely a thing to connect “Tukör” with, the band sometimes sounds like the perfect mix between The Cinematic Orchestra and Bohren und der Club of Gore, and just those two there is one thing that Törzs definitely are really good at – giving their songs just the right amount of time to breathe. They have left all desperate haste and unnecessary hurry at the entrance to the cave in which they recorded this record; and that is no joke – this is real caveman-made music. 

blackmetal / blackgaze

The second release from Hungary in this edition of the Brieviews, Hegy is leading us onto a seemingly similar path like Törzs with the opening track “Outer Rings” before turning around abruptly and then erupting harshly destroying all ideas one had about the road taken and at the very end the Alcest’ian notions are overturned again with an electronic outro. Those are reconfirmed by the beginning of “Hydra”, the second track, when they use blastbeats to show their roots and then lead into a straight up rock song of which many mainstream rock bands would be proud. It becomes clear that Hegy (Hungarian for ‘mountain’) is a band that is really capable of producing good long-tracks as there is always so much going on in their sound and songwriting. The trio doesn’t bore the listener, the guitars take him by the hand leading him from one sonic idea and motif to the next with the drums explaining a story of a harsh expedition through unknown territory sometimes going up a difficult slope and then again stumbling over earthy ground. 
Sometimes blackgaze doesn’t need vocals if the music is already pointing you in the right directions. Or turns you around to enjoy the right view before you just stare at a blank mountain wall for too long. Or plays a trick on you and you stare at a picture of a view before being pushed off the cliff but falling into an even more interesting scenario. It would be “Nefarious” not to listen to Hegy if you are into post-rock and shoegaze, blackgaze and post-metal. They have a lot to say wordlessly.

black metal

Agalloch, Saor, Winterfylleth, Panopticon – the list is long and seemingly endless when it comes to atmospheric black metal bands nowadays. Most of them have a feeling for dynamics and the situational eruption amidst vast quietness. Ben Sizer aka Arx Atrata is no exception to it. The mastermind and only member of this project uses synthesizers to spice up his musical vision which becomes clearest in the title-track of this, his third record. A 10-minute-opus, the track plays with the audience often using small ambient passages or clean guitar parts to disrupt the eruption. Sizer is definitely able to use the synthesizer to his best advantage, supporting the blastbeats and eerie guitar motifs with effective scapes in order to purvey some kind of loftiness of sound that is also noticeable in small things like some minor background guitar work where some simple chords provide a breath of air and slowly raise everything a bit higher. ‘Higher’ in general seems to be the direction that Sizer strives for, as his compositions always reach towards the open sky. Whether he will be able to follow in the footsteps of his predecessors when it comes to the success they had, remains to be seen – he surely took a lot of pages from their books and constructed his own vision and trademark sound. That is something that not too many people on the long list of atmospheric black metal bands can say for themselves. 


​Thorsten

industrial / post rock / metal / noise

Sometimes the seemingly impossible is possible. Leicester City wins the Premier League, some player not Messi or Ronaldo wins an important award, Guns’n’Roses reunite, Tom Warrior finishes his “Requiem” with an orchestra-supported performance at Roadburn. However, can a side-project achieve something as unique as the “main” project? Sometimes yes – think of S.O.D. who sometimes outshone Anthrax. 

Consumer is a side-project, and Have a Nice Life is its roots. Tim of HANL formed Consumer in 2017 together with the live-band that supports him and Dan on the road. However, it must be noted that this band is hopefully more than a once-off-project because their sound and approach are different to HANL. You can hear some proto-noise in Consumer’s sound even though it is coming from an opposite idea. If we take bands like the Melvins or Pere Ubu, it is clear that the foundation for their early work was always a guitar and the wish to do something unusual with it. Consumer also want to do something unusual, but their foundation is clearly much more focused on electronics and synths. The shared motif is distortion. Consumer distort their instruments (the aforementioned plus guitars and a regular rhythm section) and twist them around and around until everything contributes to a mantra-esque hard flow of ebb and tide. 

Sometimes the drums sound as if Einstuerzende Neubauten got the idea that self-made instruments are cool but their sound had to go through a broken vocoder to make the result even more uncomfortable just to lose a battle with a synth-driven melody that alludes to the end of a sinking ship on the open sea. Everything is in its right place, flows into one another on “In Computers” and even though the sound is hard to describe it must be clear that this band has a knack for ear candy. The sounds are unusual and sometimes harsh but they never disgust. 

The instrumental trilogy “In Computers Parts I – III” at the end is definitely HANL-like, of course as Tim is at work. The electronica in “Part II” can be seen as a little nod to Radiohead in their “Kid A/ Amnesiac”-period, not the worst of mental connections; some other parts sound like a very self-indulging and noise-less collab between Mogwai and Aphex Twin. Obviously, a lot of ideas, connections, comparisons come to mind when listening to Consumer’s full-length debut but one should note that this is a release which can take all of that scrutiny and needn’t be afraid of any of it for it is unique and self-sufficient. And maybe that is the best one can say for any side-project, right? 


​Thorsten

post rock / shoegaze

It’s very hard to do something original in music these days, be it with appearance, style, genre or any of the myriad options open to bands. Step forward Hungarian band Torzs with their latest album Tukor. You see, this impressive album was recorded in a cave, an actual honest to goodness cave system in a Hungarian National Park. This was not done just as a gimmick (although it is a pretty good one!) no, it seems that recording the record in this way gives the record a quality you just don’t get any other way. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is, but it does give the record an otherworldly quality, a depth you can almost physically feel, it’s quite beguiling and well worth the mammoth effort it must have been to get it done in this way.

The group themselves describe the album thus: “meant to inspire self-reflection, to conjure ideas about how we see ourselves in one another, how our paths through life parallel, and how these related images can become distorted based upon who’s perceiving them and how.” The whole album is a journey and indeed the music has an open expansive quality to it where you begin to journey inwards, to question past experiences and examine internal and external relations. 

 Lead track Elso starts as the albums means to go on with deliberately paced, delicate guitar picks over a gradually building rhythm section. The whole thing drips with an ethereal quality and the wispy gossamer strands of music seem like they would almost fall apart if reached for.  Album highlight and final track Hatodik takes the themes of self reflection and runs with them. The guitar work on this song truly shines, and has an almost Floydian feel to it which flows through it's entire length and you find yourself swept along by it. It’s immersive and has a definite depth to the free flowing dynamic layers of post-rock you expect. 

 So, if you like experimental free form post-rock, you will find a LOT to like in this album. If there is one criticism to be levelled at it, it’s that it brings nothing new to the genre (apart from the obvious cave recording, which admittedly is awesome) but take nothing away from this brilliant album, if you like instrumental music and post-rock in particular, you will absolutely melt into this great album, recommended.


​Simon