wave / rock

The Riddle is an odd man out. At first we had doubts to review this release but as open minded as we are, we gave this one a shot.

Fans of The Cure could be astonished with the first guitar chords of this album. On the first track (Waving Leaves) of The Tree Deep In The Forest, you can hear immediately what this is all about. The Riddle (Kennet De Bondt) must be a die hard fan of The Cure.

This Belgian DIY artist created a weird combination of a melancholic guitar sound with an indie pop like voice. The vocals sound at first conflicting with the music. Dark and sad strings guiding sunshine vocals are producing a blasphemous wedding. If you ever wondered what would happen if you mix Charlotte Sometimes with The Boys Of Summer of Don Henley (The Eagles)? Well…

The Riddle sounds like music from a parallel world, everything on The Tree Deep In The Forest is recognizable but unearthly. This time machine to the eighties had some bugs and wrong calculations creating twelve songs filled with contradiction. Kennet De Bondt vocals are soft and contain a small amount of sad vibes. The tone of his voice is rather apathetic and flat. On the pop song Happy he sings with a very joyous voice showing what he really could do.

There is a lack of tension in song structure and the music on this release, sometimes we had the feeling that doubts of choice limited the exploration of more adventures musical directions. This nut was easily busted holding an original and daring content. Honestly, this is not our cup of tea. For those who favorite and ready for dreamy pop wave music inspired by the eighties, then this could be an interesting and outlandish journey. 
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Patsker

krautrock / psychedelic rock / post rock

The Insektlife Cycle is no stranger to Merchants Of Air. This instrumental rock band from Manila has been featured a few times in the past several years. In 2015 I was quite amazed by their post rock influenced music, especially since the band members have a history in death metal and mathcore.

So that was rather surprising but perhaps even more remarkable: the band is already evolving away from the post rock scene. With 'Temple Of The Soul', this quartet jams itself into the world of krautrock and psychedelic anthemization (if that is a word).

The four lengthy tracks on this album have been recorded during a 150 minutes lasting jam session and recorded live on a four track cassette player. With that, it might be rather normal to be catapulted back into the sixties and seventies. Pretty much everything on this record breathes that vintage air, from the cover to the elaborate guitar solos and the overall sound quality. So no, this is no longer a post rock band, this is a psychedelic jam act that will rock your socks off if you're into this kind of stuff.

The music on the record has been cut from the original tape recording, which is quite noticeable in opener 'Unmentioned Motions'. This track does not feature an intro or anything, it just starts rocking rather suddenly. From the very beginning the drums and bass guitar provide a steady foundation over which the guitar players seem to enjoy absolute freedom. 'Sonic Sermons' is my personal favorite, mostly because of its doomy blues feel. Title track 'Temple of Our Soul' would make a neat sixties movie soundtrack.

The closer is up to you to discover. If you are a fan of long jam sessions, inspired by everything between Hendrix and Hawkwind and Pink Floyd, this album deserves a shot. Perhaps it needs some time to grow on you, but once inside, you'll never want to get out of there.


​Serge

post rock / progressive rock

I'm not a gamer. The few computer games I play appear rather laughable to the die-hard gaming community. While some are occupied with first person shooting games and others conquer ancient online worlds, I build cities or have my Sim do quite normal stuff. On the other hand, I would like to make a game. I already have a few ideas. One of them is the game being stuffed with music, mostly to enhance the atmosphere but also because I think some artists create perfect music for this kind of stuff. And that takes me to Indian one-man project Mixtaped Monk, who recently released his new album. 'How To Live Inside A VMMORPG', a neat progressive post rock album.

The story behind he album is pretty neat. A group of gamers gets stuck into a Virtual Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, titled 'Tales From Skylar'. Unable to log-out, the group now lives in the game and faces real challenges. The eight songs represent different situations and one of those tracks is the best piece of music I've heard Arka produce. While opener 'It took Forever to Decipher the meaning behind it All' is loyal to the progressive guitar driven sound of Mixtaped Monk, 'We exist in a place Hidden away from the Stars' is a musical chef d'oeuvre. Moody and melancholic, this tune expresses something playful and soothing.

Although the music is slow, Mixtaped Monk comes up with rhythm and repetitive sequences over which he frolics with guitar solos. 'Rock is still Alive but We are not' is a great example of that approach. Driving on a pulsating bass and drums foundation, the guitars whirl and flutter. Here and there Santana comes to mind. Arka is one of those musicians who prefer high notes over droning bass lines and that might set him apart from most post rock acts. Instead of bands like Explosions In The Sky or Godspeed, Mixtaped Monk seems to be inspired by Mike Oldfield and Steven Wilson.

So, if you're looking for decent progressive rock music, I'm quite sure this album will satisfy your needs. I only wonder, as I do so often with one-man acts, what would happen if Arka turns this project into a live band. The songs are great, the atmosphere is spot-on and the overall quality of this release is certainly good enjoy to be enjoyed in a live setting. Perhaps we will never know. All I know is that 'How To Live Inside A VMMORPG' is another excellent set of compositions, destined to be explored and enjoyed by a large group of prog-rock fans.


Serge

stoner rock / garage rock / sludge metal

Tårn is an album released on May 3, by South African stoner and garage rock group Ruff Majik. A very energetic, effusive and heavy album, the record, almost thirty-seven minutes long, has seven tracks: 1) Schizophrenic; 2) Gloom & Tomb; 3) I'll dig the grave; 4) Dread breath; 5) Heretically happy; 6) Speed hippie; 7) Seasoning the witch; despite the simplicity of its general structure, the sound displayed by the band in this furious work can be described as pure, mature, exceedingly powerful, resonant and lancinating. Definitely, a work that will easily please the enthusiasts of the genre.
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There is nothing in Tårn that you haven’t heard before in similar albums. The record is predominantly abundant in incisive, brutal and rude guitar lines, hazardous and practically self-governing destructive and hallucinating, but lucid musical cohesiveness, dense and protuberating, but intense melodies, and all these elements converges altogether to consolidate with masterful elegance an intricate conjuncture of chaotic rhythmic ordinances, that imperiously gravitates towards the gracefully diligent and pervasive creative axis of a sound that collides with the symbiotic grievances of its own robust and wild consistence.  

Despite its more conventional overtones, and the lack of innovation, Tårn can be considered an excellent album, that never disappoints. With hostile, sometimes lethargic, but always brutal guitar lines – that dilutes the phantasmagoric dissonances of its aggressive behavior throughout the implosion of its sonorous, but ostensibly sensorial kingdom of wrath –, Ruff Majik conceives a sound whose stylish virtues dilapidates with cruel veracity the most lethal, tempestuous and arcane, but also flexible elements of stoner rock, concomitantly exposing with grace and salutary vivacity a mosaic of plural qualities, that will definitely expose to audiences the fantastic artistic ambitions and the extraordinary level of versatility present in the group’s music. 

With a primarily dense and heavy sound that becomes exceedingly serene and melancholic in some precise moments, the general style of Ruff Majik can be described as the perfect combination of intricate fury and vivacious energy, correctly inserted in an emotional battlefield of cohesive authorial sagacity, that extends the tissue of elegant harmonies beyond the atmosphere of perennial predictability. Exposing a graceful level of musical excellence that deserves to be widely appreciated, Tårn reveals itself as an exceptionally fantastic album, that carefully positions the creative standards for stoner rock into another perspective.  


Wagner

metal

metal / death metal

facebook

progressive rock / experimental

psychedelic rock / doom

hard rock

progressive metal

psychedelic rock /  doom

sludge metal / doom

black metal

alternative rock / psychedelic / noise rock

progressive rock

Dark Matter is an album released in March 29, by Polish progressive rock guitarist Tomasz Piwecki. Almost fifty minutes long, the record has nine tracks: 1) Nebula; 2) Dark matter; 3) Earth; 4) Moonlight; 5) Serum vitae; 6) Eye of the cyclone; 7) Path; 8) Storm; 9) Walls; an interesting album with highly energetic, dense and impulsive guitar lines, Dark Matter is an almost surreal journey throughout a multilayered diagram of colorful, pungent and pervasive, though somewhat ambivalent harmonies, that highlights the colossal greatness of its deeply precious and imponderable virtues, abruptly convoluted in a horizon of lucid, though proverbially diluted creativity. 

An interesting album with beautiful harmonies, Dark Matter is – anatomically and sonorously speaking – profoundly conventional, though competent and decent instrumental progressive rock. Despite some generic passages, the album is exceedingly satisfactory and its music has an organic, vibrant disposition, as well as a salutary and vivacious degree of dynamism. With ascendant harmonies devised by a dispersive mosaic of expansive guitar lines, the music style of Tomasz Piwecki is expressively lucid and sober, and definitely aggregates, though in a relatively moderate scale, a graciously genuine level of inventiveness into the genre. 

Despite some limitations – and a minor degree of musical predictabilities –, Dark Matter reveals itself to be a very good album, all the way through. With marvelously competent and proficient technical skills, Tomasz Piwecki proves that there is nothing he can’t do with a guitar. His compositional skills knows no boundaries or selective tendencies. An intelligent, complex and highly functional artist that knows how to design and display sound into different shapes, atmospheres and distinctive tonalities, this exceptional musician delivers to his audience a highly intense and pungent selection of guitar driven symphonies. 

Primordially recommended to enthusiasts of progressive rock, there is nothing in Dark Matter that you haven’t heard before in other albums of the genre. Nevertheless, the album is successful at achieving an unexpected degree of genuine artistry, gradually revealing a talented, dedicated and audacious musician that definitely conceives with his masterful creative sensibility a very personal style, fantastically exposing with his eagerness the graceful delicacy of his introspective musical restlessness. Definitely, Dark Matter is an interesting progressive rock album, that – despite some level of rhythmic and melodic limitations – has enough qualities to be moderately appreciated.


Wagner

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

psychedelic / alternative rock

The Netherlands are well-known for their diverse and eclectic music scenes. From the dullest shlagers to the raunchiest grindcore, everything is being made there. That obviously includes rock music, and in this case, I'd like to call it long-distance rock.
Long-distance rock music, the kind which makes you want to step in a old Chevrolet and drive for hundreds of kilometres while cranking up the volume, that's what you get with this album by Dutch rockers No Man's Valley. Or at least, that's what I experienced, especially with the gritty, grungy and bluesy opener 'Outside The Dream'. 


The music on this album cannot be easily described, although I can throw in heaps of styles and references. While the opener was a stoner blues cracker, 'Eyeball' blends alternative rock with cabaresque experimentality. Throughout the entire thing I hear influences from bands like Pearl Jam, Pink Floyd and Deep Purple, plus, since the final track is titled 'Murder Ballad', I expect some Nick Cave references in there too. Oddly enough, that gloomy slow rock feel mostly shines through in the beautiful 'From Nowhere'.

So there is alternative rock, there is grunge, there is psychedelic desert blues but there is also a brilliant atmosphere that brings me back to underground venues and the sheer joy of discovering live music. If No Man's Valley manages to deliver the same quality on stage as on this album, I see great things coming for them. Although I doubt if any of these songs with ever make it to the charts, their solid composing skills will certainly turn some heads into their direction.

On stage, the gritty rocker 'Lies' will probably be a fan favorite. For starters, it's one of the few uptempo tunes here. It has an infectious chorus and massively enjoyable organ melodies. Many butts will be shaking, that's pretty much a guarantee. In all, I think you just can't go wrong with No Man's Valley if you're into original and authentic rock music. So yeah, I think this is a pretty damn good album, one that will quite often appear in my day-to-day playlist from now on. 


​Serge

psychedelic rock / garage rock / stoner rock

experimental / jazz / drone / ambient

Ormo Records

doom / stoner rock

drone / ambient / experimental / noise

Attenuation Circuit

electronic / techno

bandcamp

drone / doom / shoegaze

ambient

equanimity. Those twenty minutes of Sublime Silence contain healing and reposeful sounds which are welcome in this over-stressed society we live in. If you are into this kind of meditative sound creations, there is a lot to discover from this artist on his Bandcamp page.

ambient / dark ambient

Dark and melancholic ​moods change into spacey ambient tonalities, sometimes kittenish, other times filled with doom. The world of Sílení is covered with alienated sounds and moods. This is an excellent piece of work. Dark ambient lovers, if you listen to Sílení’s Long Forgotten Bowers, you will get hooked. We sure did!

dark ambient

Mother Destruction above standards in this genre. The album is a varied piece of work caught in a deep haunting, emotional prison. Sacrifice and dedication are translated in penetrating sounds and choruses. The nightmare never seems over in this pungent journey of hellish fires. 
Another quote from Empty Chalice: ‘… the lost ones are retracing the path of the oldest fairy tale: coming home’. Well, we did come home and we still feel home between the moods and vibes of this wonderful dark ambient recording.

dark ambient

Winter Light

over a ten year period. Nimh is active since 2001 and has already more than twenty physical albums released. Sound chasers will be pleased and excited with the multi-layering of soundscapes, field recordings, voices and the experimental manipulations of samples this album contains. The sustained drones create darkened and emotive moods. Beyond The Crying Era is an outstanding soundtrack for a SF/horror movie that does not exist. It’s time to dig deeper in Nimh’s music history. Speaking about a discharge!

dark ambient

the world of Anantakara. We’ve noticed psychedelic influences appearing in the mysterious structures of  the tracks. The eight adventurous ambient pieces on Momentum Lapses are filled with a variety of lovely compositions and moods. Rumors told us that this album will be released on CD in the future. Anantakara stands for “ to make infinite” in Sanskrit. In some way this album does.

Serge (1-6)
​Patsker (7-11)

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