progressive rock / post rock / progressive rock

One of the reasons why I started this whole Merchants Of Air thing was to push underrated albums and artists who rarely seem to be featured elsewhere. The world of music is so vast and so magnificent that many interesting acts get left behind and that's a shame. So I started seeking them and writing about them. Soon they started finding us and in only a few years time there was an overwhelming amount of albums coming in, many of which are still in my day-to-day playlist. 'All The Useless Spinning' by Polish duo Miist is one of those underrated and underappreciated albums, one which takes me back to the roots of Merchants Of Air.

Miist is Michał Koczor on guitars & synths and Robert 'Falon' Kułakowski on drums. They seem to share a mutual love for jamming, which almost continuously shines through on these tunes. They also share an admiration for psychedelic and progressive rock, plus they have at least three albums by post rock bands in their collection. In their rehearsing studio, they mix all of these elements and influences together into a neat collection of immersive and energetic compositions and luckily for us, those tunes are now available on CD.

The album opens with the long 'Philosophy of Pessimism'. This anthem immediately sets the tone: atmospheric, cinematic, immersive and quite often overwhelming. Although coined as heavy psychedelic rock, there is so much more to experience. Throughout the entire album I hear influences from bands like Monkey 3, My Sleeping Karma, Casa Sui but also Pink Floyd and even Tangerine Dream here and there. Yeah, instrumental, psychedelic and progressive but most of all immersive and captivating.

I'm not going into a song by song description on this one. The songs are quite similar in nature, driving on a mild tempo, delivering amazing guitar licks and solos, plus a high jam feel. The album feels like a concept record, with highly narrative melodies and plenty of variation to keep it interesting. So yes, this is an underrated album, one which deserves a lot more attention. Miist is a talented duo which ever progrocker needs to check out immediately.


​Serge

electronic / ambient / progressive / psychill

The Invisible Sun is an album released in March 29, by Serbian electronic music artist Branko Stojiljkovic, best known by the nom de plume Argus. An exceedingly imponderable, vast and effusive album, whose consistent and omnipotent atmosphere extends over diluted realms of gracefully harmonious and abstract infinities, the music of Argus filters and rejuvenates psychedelic elements in a delightful and wonderfully methodic prism of colorful algorithms of splendorous patterns, displaying an organic synergy of dynamic sonorous proclivities, that overemphasizes the exceptional fluidity of a fantastically elongated creative tissue.  

With nine tracks – 1) Questions; 2) Holy Smoke; 3) The Invisible Sun; 4) The Forest Sings; 5) You Are The Power; 6) Clouds; 7) Aurora; 8) On a Lonely Path; 9) Sadness; – the album is a veracious and genuine psychedelic journey throughout a marvelous spectacle of sounds, whose gracious sensitivity revolves around a vivacious ocean of serene and peaceful melodies, exposed in an expansive scale of revolving tenacity, that compresses the constrained essence of its own reasonable, introspective and gregarious grandiosity.   

With a lucid creativity that departs from the diluted tenderness of an infinite dispersive soul, the sound that irradiates from this album is a profoundly instinctive humane cosmogony, whose arbitrary exasperations are projected from the fertile grounds of its own originally distant musical sensibilities, although the amazingly beautiful compositions that are appreciated the entire time anticipates the fragmentary vitality of a gracefully pungent ordeal that unveils a formidable parallax of creativity, unable to stop at the pragmatic level of a splendorous and highly innovative versatile excellence.  

A formidably lancinating, cohesive and spectacularly fascinating psychedelic electronic music album that doesn’t fear being radically innovative and vastly different, The Invisible Sun is a colorful mosaic of perceptive sounds, whose immensely overwhelming and gracefully diligent style circulates within the vicinities of a cosmic dissidence, in a furiously creative turbulence, virtuous enough to reinvent a type of music that can understand the summary of its own objectives. A fantastic album whose original qualities basically creates a new sonorous diagram, The Invisible Sun is an audacious, pioneer and intuitive work of art, that defies genre boundaries and creates its own musical parameters within a diluted, but constructive dynamic of sound. 


Wagner

progressive rock

Ghost Kingdom is an album released on March 15, by Russian progressive rock act Ships Fly Up, a project of musician Egor Fedotov. Fifty-one minutes long, the record has nine tracks: 1) Ghost Kingdom; 2) About Death; 3) I'm with You; 4) Your Own World; 5) Take My Hand; 6) It Calls; 7) Strange Game; 8) Manifestation; 9) Anomaly; while delivering a more conventional instrumental style of progressive rock, Ghost Kingdom displays a genuine and melancholic beauty, whose depressive and placid sagacity overcomes and simultaneously contemplates the serenity of a sincere and majestic sonorous reality. With a dense, lucid and vast – but concomitantly graceful and expansive – musical layer, the style of Ships Fly Up is impregnated with a mordacious sensibility, that rescues within the most profound depths of the soul the intuitive solitude of an isolated and exasperated existence.

While the sound of this album definitely designs, defines and transmits perfectly the atmosphere of an extenuating, lugubrious and permanently obscure existence – but with a formidable degree of splendidly poetic beauty –, the sober and elusive style of Fedotov is abundantly marvelous and cohesively captivating. With wonderful, unique, sentimental and amazingly seductive guitar lines, Ghost Kingdom gradually reveals itself as an elegant, pure, authorial and pristine work of art, that evidently has established a moderately elevated musical standard for its imperative, but ostensibly diluted creative virtues, that gets better and better as the album evolves. 

With a wonderful style of his own, Fedotov exhibits a masterful domain of the guitar, displaying an impressive, iridescent and surreal degree of pulsating knowledge, effervescent competence and audacious precision, that highlights his exceptionally wonderful and brilliant compositional skills. While very tangentially the album – at least in certain passages –, does fall sometimes in the more conventional grounds of progressive rock, in a general evaluation, the latent beauty and the marvelous grandiosity the artist reveals abundantly in Ghost Kingdom unveils a splendorous state of the art work, full of peculiarly pungent, original and innovative virtues, that definitely consecrates Fedotov in a special, more contemplative and genuine category of musicians. 

With a relevant magnitude of symmetry and overwhelming grace, definitely Ghost Kingdom can be considered an exceptional and astoundingly magnificent work. Despite minor passages that sounds invariably generic, this album showcases a profoundly skilled and cohesive artist, whose sensational contributions has everything necessary to improve the genre, in the best way possible. 


Wagner

progressive rock

Arka Sengupta is already a household name here at Merchants Of Air. In the past few years, we have been following his one-man post rock act Mixtaped Monk. Now, he comes with something different. Not completely different but certainly different enough to release it under a brand new name, Home Brewed Universe.
With this project, Arka leaves the world of post rock behind and throws himself in the ever expanding progressive rock universe. The focus is still on instrumental music, mostly driven by guitars but it's those guitars who now gain the upperhand over the atmosphere, which might take a few minutes to get used to.

The album opens with 'Phosphorescence'. Immediately the programmed drums determine the foundation on which the guitars seem to improvise freely. That being said, most of the album focuses on immense guitar solos. 'Divergence' is an immersive anthem, with joyful piano and narrative solo work. Bands that come to mind include everything between Pink Floyd and Dream Theater, which I guess is not a bad set of bands to be compared with.

I think I wrote it before. What Arka does is excellent. He is a great composer and and excellent craftsman. Yet, I think that songs like 'Convergence I' or the beautiful 'Remembrance' could really come to their own in a full live setting. The overall feel is that of a well written progressive rock album which deserves a professional production, merely because of the artist's talent and vision. Then again, there is this stunning piece of music titled 'Reassurance', which convinces me of the overall quality of this album.

I'm sure that progressive rock fans with appreciate these tracks. Guitar players will absolutely adore the technical skills. Arka can wave to people like Malmsteen or Vai and smile, not just because of the countless of hours of practice but also because of the emotion he manages to put into the music. In all, this is a satisfying debut, one that makes me curious for the future of Home Brewed Universe. So for now, you'd might want to check this out. There is some abundant joy to be found here.


​Serge

progressive / black metal / doom

In The Woods… were once a legendary progressive metal band from Norway during the 90’s. They released a total of five studio albums, three singles, one compilation album and one live album throughout its initial existence. The band disbanded in 2000 and reformed surprisingly in 2014.

With the album Pure they continued their story with a new lead singer James Fogarty. In 2016 the Botteri brothers left the band leading onto Alex Weisbeek and Bernt Sørensen joining In the Woods... for bass and guitar sessions. Drummer Anders Kobro is the only original member left.

With all those band member changes In The Woods… sounds still like In The Woods… The sound of the band has still the same powerful resonance and intelligence like on the albums Omnio and Strange In Stereo. Cease The Day has a more varied and intensified sound. The music feels more atmospheric and has more black metal influences. Their weeping guitar sound has moved more towards a melodic direction with a very wide-ranging approach of vocals. Black metal screaming and clean singing joining each other in balance.

In The Woods… is still refining their sound and experimenting with various tunes and moods. The keyboards are used to give the songs on Cease The Day a creative and distinctive mood. Elements of doom, progressive and black metal are melted in this very interesting piece of work. Slow old school pieces chance to aggressive soaring black metal and visa versa. The guitars speed up and resonate heavier than they ever did before. 

Cease The Day is mind-bending with an avant-garde touch. In The Woods… shows that the path they walk is powerful and covered with surprising ambience. The story of this band hasn’t been told completely. From their debut Heart of the Ages (1995) until today with Cease The Day (2018), this band sounds still original, progressive, melodic, heavy, kaleidoscopic and timeless. We could stay day and night in the woods listening to In The Woods…

​
Patsker

hardcore / grindcore / crust

black metal

grunge / alternative metal / progressive rock

doom

alternative rock

death metal

punk rock

bandcamp

electronic

electronic / darkwave / EBM / Industrial

shoegaze

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 / progressive rock

Dormant is an album released on December 9, by Belgian post rock band noisedriver. An interesting, inspiring and original album, definitely transpires a lucid and groundbreaking approach to the genre, revitalizing the virtuous grandiosity of its robust and exhilarating musical universe, despite its rude conciseness – the album is only thirty minutes long. With melodies that strikes the limits of its outer proportions, with occasionally surprising, graciously harmonious and brief melodic arpeggios, noisedriver definitely goes outside the ordinary boundaries of the genre, flirting intelligently with progressive rock, elaborating and delivering to the audience a totally different experience in terms of musical perception and creativity. 

With seven tracks – Domesticated Nomads, Oneironautics, Reductionism, Metaphors, A Priori, Nihilism and Transcendence –, the sound becomes more and more surprising as the album advances. With deeply melancholic melodies either, the group delivers a profoundly extravagant and intense, but also refined and sensible harmonious densities, whose unbearable cosmogonies anticipates the grandiosity of its own hyperbolic artistic ambitions. As the striking beauty of highly unpredictable melodies conceives a very introspective place of consecrated rapture, the soul and the essence of the record reveals an impalpable, but thoroughly triumphant creative grandeur, that converts your conscience into an ocean of unlimited sensitivities, where an infinite and fantastic perceptive splendor aggregates the vivacity of life into your dreams.   

With a profoundly superb degree of originality, Dormant reveals itself to be a splendid and glorious album, all the way through. Displaying a complex degree of audacity and experimentalism – but completely devoid of any type of excesses or empty exhibitionism –, the music of noisedriver is a refreshing, dynamic and colorful parallax, almost to the point of perfection, never being too technical nor superficial, but exceedingly revitalizing and genuine. With a sensible, but also fabulous level of creativity, they are definitely one of those gracious talents capable to give the underground a whole new diagram of potentialities. 

A marvelous album, with basically no deficiencies whatsoever, Dormant – contrary to what the title suggests – will keep you hallucinated; as a matter of fact, exhilarated, as long as the album keeps playing. Given the fact that the album is too short, I have listened to it two times in direct sequence. And the impression of its undoubtedly virtuous artistic grandiosity only grew. Definitely, albums like this one are not created every day. Dormant is a unique masterpiece, and a great gift to all post rock enthusiasts everywhere.  


Wagner

progressive rock / progressive metal / post metal 

Fire by the Silos is an album released in the beginning of the month by British instrumental progressive metal group Toska. Sixty four minutes long, the record has nine tracks: The Herd, A Tall Order, Abomasum, Congress, Fire by the Silos, When Genghis Wakes, Ataraxy, Prayermonger and The Heard. An interesting album, that reveals a mature, proficient and very technical band, Toska doesn’t have any fears when experimenting with distinct sounds, synchronicities, cadences, dissonances and interchanging rhythms, interweaving all those elements in a very interesting musical mosaic, with a majestic degree of experimentalism that really makes them an extraordinary musical act, that definitely doesn’t know what a comfort zone is, since their main musical disposition is to disrupt them all.

With an intelligent, diverse and unconventional musical identity, that departs from exceedingly original premises, the music of Toska is bounded by audacity and opulent doses of vertical, dissolute and flexible creativity, despite the fact that their sound is prominently heavy, and they never retreat in the slightest degree the ferocious nature of their music. Nevertheless, I do think that Toska is a band that works better as a live act (but this is just speculation, I never had the privilege of seeing them playing). While their sound is powerful and full of qualities that make their style to be quite exuberant and consistent, Fire by the Silos is a very extensive album, that eventually becomes repetitive, and highly fractured by hazardous levels of predictability and monotony – although these deficiencies, in a general evaluation, doesn’t harm the album in any way –, especially when you fully acknowledge the anatomy, the dynamics and the general propensities of their musical diagram.

Despite their apparent flaws, I must say that Toska has some abrasive and coherent virtues, that definitely consolidates wisely the sensibilities of their style. With rude and tempestuous, but also expansive and serene harmonies, they advance vigorously towards experimental territory with more bravery, tenacity, cohesion and graciousness than most bands do, with a level of creativity and security that is definitely above the ordinary standards.   

But I feel they pushed some of their most organic and vital musical elements too far on this album, revealing too much of them. When the album finishes, you feel saturated, without the curiosity or the need to listen to more of their stuff. Toska has to learn to leave the audience with the “I want more” taste, that is the basic premise of conquest. Of course, this is only my personal evaluation about Fire by the Silos. But, like I wrote some lines above, I do feel that they are the type of band that simply sounds perfect in a live performance, being Toska one of those acts that are just made for live concerts, rather than records. Despite this observations, I should point it out that Fire by the Silos – regardless of minor deficiencies – is an interesting, aggressive, pungent and exhilarating record, that elaborates dispersive and severely dilacerating atmospheres, that makes universes collide, in the rapturously extreme dissonances that falls over the strenuous harmonies of their elegant and very abrasive sound, with versatile dispositions that definitely makes Toska one of the most promising acts in their genre, active nowadays in the contemporary underground scene.  


Wagner

post rock / progressive rock

Chains For The Sea is an album released in November 11, by Greek post rock group Halocraft. A little more than forty minutes long, the record has nine tracks: Under the Waves she Sleeps, The Daughter you've Always Wanted, Vertigo, the Desire to Fall, Chains for the Sea, In Orbit, Those who sow winds, It has Awaken, False Vacuum and She speaks of stars. With beautiful, passionate and delicate harmonies, this album is marvelous, despite the fact that, after some time, becomes relatively predictable. Nevertheless, there is a genuine beauty and a wonderfully poetic fragrance, deeply attached to its virtuous melodies, which definitely makes this interesting and gracefully expressive work totality worthwhile of your time, despite some minor and obvious limitations. 

With a progressive layout embellished by gracious and creatively majestic guitar lines – albeit moderately inclined to a hyperbolic, but genuine melodic pretension – there is a wonderful degree of vivacity gravitating around the sensational axis of a colorful musical conjuncture, that balances towards the fertile density of its own sonorous anatomy. The sound of the band is fundamentally organic, and reorganizes its own volatile proclivities according to a very intuitive pragmatism.

The gracious, calm and delicate vividness of its colorful harmonies is the most exceptional element present on Chains For The Sea, although the group rapidly tends to lose its moderation, and to be excessively dispersive in the continual development of a revolving musical tissue, that converges to an indefinitely expansive atmosphere generated primarily by guitar driven melodies. Nevertheless, what we have here is a very decent and cohesive result, that not only understands the logic of its own vicissitudes, but displays an elaborate set of vividly poetic sonorous tonalities, that are profusely elongated with its own infinite methodic layout, that never seeks the end of its own personal universe of fragile melancholy. The final track is a vocal track, that closes in an elegant and elusive style this graciously crafted work.  

While Chains For The Sea is not a magnificent album, the work has strong qualities, and a satisfactory level of originality, vigorously displayed by the enthusiastic sincerity of its musical synergy. Departing from audaciously pungent and creative virtues, highlighted by a sensibility that seriously seeks the splendor of its own introspective serenity through the waves of formidable and delicate symphonies, this album definitely is a captivating sonorous experience. Despite the fact that the group eventually disperses its musical grace by undertaking a drastic, severe and excessive dive into its qualities, extending them too much beyond the boundaries of virtuosity, and sacrificing their triumph by making a sound that eventually becomes too homogeneous, Chains For The Sea remains an interesting work to be delightfully appreciated, despite its minor deficiencies. 
 

Wagner