Don’t ever dare to ask me why, but I really do like split albums! And the record I am about to analyze now is an anthological split between Post-Rock acts pg.lost, from Sweden, and Wang Wen, from China. Although both are not well-known outside their respective home countries, they are veteran bands, pg.lost being active since 2006, and Wang Wen since 1999. So, both know what it means to endure and persist in the tough road of post-rock music, an underground genre with a somewhat narrow fan base.

Going directly to the point, I can say that their split album is interesting, with curious elements for the category, and an unusual approach that can mislead some of the most deep-hearted post-rock enthusiasts. With only five tracks, and a total length of 39:40, the pg.lost songs – the first two –, are the most heterogeneous ones, being well balanced with a fine structure of well dosed arrangements, deep rotted in a gracious but very dark melancholic setting, segregated by harmonies that circle the melodies in a very lucid sonorous scenery. Nevertheless, it’s important to point it out the fact that these two opening tracks – properly titled Desperdicio (part I) and Desperdicio (part II) – as the names would definitely suggest, are seen by the band as only one track divided in two (and since this is post-rock, it’s easy to believe!). The other three – the Wang Wen tracks –, titled 13th, Homeland Accent and Mouse Song are definitely a little more homogeneous, and ironically these three songs could be considered only one track, as if they were an extension of the same music, being a natural evolution of the starting point rhythm, since they are way more monotonous in tone, and stay that way. 

With some elements of hard rock, yet stranded in a post-rock stillness, the pg.lost tracks are a fine example of musical excellence and relevance, situated in an atmosphere of haze, grace and solemnity, that transforms sorrow into a masterpiece of gloom and grief, all framed up in a synthesis of sound and sense that will rearrange your feelings in a curious alternating state of trance and rapture. When the Wang Wen tracks begin, the musical highness digresses, and, although you might think at the beginning that the high level of artistry will stay throughout the record, it declines a little, although I should write that here we also deal with an unusual, and at a certain point interesting, contrast of different styles, which will be an obvious attestation, since we have two different bands at the forefront here.  

I personally liked way more the pg.lost tracks, since, a few minutes away from the beginning of the Wang Wen first track, you can get a little bored, and, since the pace of their music doesn’t change too much, you don’t feel too motivated to continue listening to it, although I am not saying it is bad, but it is a little too much static to compel you to listening to the entire record. The post-rock genre can be dangerous in a way that – if you’re not creative enough – you will be playing the same music over and over again, since it is almost a “frozen” genre, and the melodies, to captivate its audience, should be as alive as the colors in an impressionistic painting. The Wang Wen part is cool, but the pg.lost tracks are simply wonderful. So, contrary to most split albums, this is not a typical case of well-defined symmetry between two bands, although both outfits seem accurately clocked, regarding the time of their songs: the pg.lost tracks stays between nine and ten minutes long, and the Wang Wen tracks are all six minutes long, in average. Regardless of the complex contrasts between the two bands, their different styles and the strained combination on having both in the same record, we can’t deny the fact that the final result turned out to be a good one, legitimate and very faithful to its post-rock roots and elements.      


​Wagner

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You should never write an article when you're hungry, that's what I learned today. When Serge asked me if I had another 'Rik's Rarities' ready for publication today, I told him "I will". But then I realized that I was still in bed. It was noon, it hadn't eaten, not even a cup of coffee.

​So I rushed to my living room and searched the interwebs for something strange. Suddenly, there was a Motorhead burger playing guitar and that evil, evil McDonalds clown was yelling weird things at me. It was surreal. I didn't want to listen, I just wanted to eat this band.

Anyway, their name is Mac Sabbath. They cover Black Sabbath in a weird theme-restaurant kind of way. They tag their music as "Drive Thru Metal" and they're funny as hell. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm really, really, really hungry...

The Seven Mile Journey is a post rock band from Denmark that created with their eponymous 2001 album, and their subsequent release, 2006 The Journey Studies, an outstanding and overwhelmingly innovative definition to Post Rock as a genre, reinventing the atmospheric lay outs of Post Rock as a whole, and brightly consolidating the quintessential elements of sonorous structure known as walls of sound, grounded as a milestone for the post rock categorization, being not just its very own definition as a kind of music, but becoming in the process a reference not only to the genre per se, but helping to define, build and rearrange all the musical boundaries and main headlines that inspired the onset for this kind of music, setting the patterns and standardizing the milestones for all subsequent bands who came after them, being hugely influenced by their abilities to create and outline well restrained space harmonies, that easily set up the amazing sound frames that makes their music one of the most wonderful sounds in Post Rock history.

With a very singular sound, to say the least, The Seven Mile Journey composes a very calm, but somewhat reluctantly philosophical path of conscious harmony with their music, that explores the painful and exhilarating tone of tranquility in a very dubious, but at the same time confident style, that delivers to its audience the excruciating sadness of a melancholic melody, so beautifully executed that sometimes you think that it is impossible for someone to play such beautiful songs in such an astounding sequence, as you travel to very distant places being carried away only by the strength of the sound itself. And you pick yourself up just wandering “Who the hell are these guys”? I know, I share this feeling too. I can’t believe my ears every time I listen to them. Their gloom, perfectly combined with their timing reason for mathematical consistency makes their music a milestone in post rock history. All majestically aligned with a despondent feeling of idiosyncratic and imponderable beauty, so poetically nocturnal and astonishingly sad that you really want their music never to have an end, and just keep listening, until you are teleported from this world to the next, the diffuse and lonely lost world that they create with the untouchable philosophical atmosphere that their sound elaborates inside the mind of the listener. And you just want to hear them for the rest of your life.  

To say the least, The Seven Mile Journey is one of those bands that you carry away with you for your entire life. With a sound filled with cosmic poetry, deep sorrow, nocturnal skies, philosophical questions and unquestionable journeys, that leaves a deep mark inside yourself, their music is not only suggestively powerful to the senses, but you are really struck at the path of their artistic creativity, being always surprised with the homogeneous and spontaneous metamorphosis of their music, that constantly shapes itself and changes, to be always the same. And you become mesmerized, with an ulterior sense of divine ascendancy taking control of your perceptions, never to be the same again. And those beautiful lines of guitar, always dictating imperative, serene and constructive melodies, that build worlds of ascendant omnipotent shadows deep inside your soul, for the sake of a truth that will always be intangible, like the music, and the masterly aligned notes that, together, originated this insuperable work of art, never to be surpassed, in the history of music. At least, for a long time.      

Despite being unknown outside the Post Rock atmosphere, The Seven Mile Journey can positively be considered one of the best bands in the world today, being of a highly undeniable importance to the genre, forever and always. True post rockers will always pay a tribute to this overwhelmingly astonishing band! Unfortunately, it is five years now without releasing new material, and their Facebook page it’s not frequently updated, although we sure have several signs that make us think that the band is still active. Last year saw them play a lot of gigs in China, so I personally think there is hope concerning a new album in the near future. 

At least, we can always think positive! When one of the best Post Rock bands in the world are making underground history, you certainly try to keep up all the marvelous expectations regarding their career, and a future album.
   
Long life to Post Rock! 


​Wagner

I don't know why, but I've always adored original ways to approach music. So when I found this enchanting mix between a band and an art installation, I knew it was time for another 'Rik's Rarities'. The band plays underwater, yes, underwater, in huge aquariums. Their instruments are especially designed or adjusted for the task. Oh, and the music is simply beautiful, ethereal if you will. And it looks beautiful too.