pop / rock

You might know Asger Techau from Danish indie rock band Kashmir, where he takes care of the drums. However, since the inception of the band in 1991, Asger Techau has been writing a number of songs on his own. Now, after eleven years of writing, he finally compiled these songs on an album, aided by musicians he knows and respects. The result is an album full of gentle pop rock songs with a lot of atmosphere and emotion.

Opener 'Breathe' immediately reminds me of Depeche Mode, even though this music is far away from synthpop. I think the reference comes from Techau's voice and song lines which are often quite similar to the synthpop deities. The reference will also remain present throughout most of the songs, often accompagnied by people like Nick Cave, David Bowie, Franz Ferdinand , Coldplay and Kaiser Chiefs . I guess that's not a bad set of names to be compared with.

My favorite tracks are the bluesy 'Brother' and the earworm 'Big City Dropout'. That being said, there are plenty of earworms on this album. I'm positive that some of these lyrics and vocal lines will be immediately recognizable when you hear these songs again. They also have the capacity to get stuck in your head, which in this case is a good thing. Other songs worth mentioning include the hit-sensitive tearjerker 'No Misgivings' and the indie rocker 'Iron Betty'.

So if you like decent songwriting skills, emotive rock ballads and a relaxed atmosphere, you surely have to check out this gem. It's just one of those albums that make your daily tasks a little bit more enjoyable, capable of putting a contented smile on your face. At least, that is what happened to me when I listened while doing the dishes. I'm sure this music is suited for a lot more activities than that too. So go ahead, get your hands on this album.


Serge

post rock / opera

I guess I don't have to introduce Danish post rock masterminds Efterklang to most of our readers. They have been around for quite some time now and they have always been keen on delivering high quality music with a flair for experiment. For this album, they cooperated with Danish composer Karsten Fundal, who has made soundtracks for movies as well as orchestral pieces and chamber music. Yet, Kundal too seems to have this urge to experiment and isn't weary of cooperating with pop and rock musicians either. Together, they wrote this opera, performed by Efterklang and The Happy Hopeless Orchestra. The lyrics were written by poet Ursula Andkjaer Olsen and vocalised by a number of opera singers. Yes, you can say that this is quite an ambitious project.

Perhaps it's safe to say that this a modern opera as there are little to no post rock passages present. So don't expect the usual set up of guitars, drums, bass and synths. There are plenty of soundscapes, that's true, but for this album, you might as well simply compare them to their classical counterparts like cellos, violins, horns and so on. When I first listened to this album, I couldn't go much further than utter the phrase "ambient inspired opera" and even now, after several listens, I still stick with that one. Unlike most operas I've heard in my life, this one lacks the overwhelming bombast. It seems to take on quite a minimal and often electronic approach and I can definitely appreciate that. In fact, after several listens, the album starts to grow on me, something no opera has ever managed to do.

Truth be told, I'm not really a fan of opera, but I am extremely curious about how this strange but wonderful piece will be performed live. It's certainly a genre-bending piece of work, challenging every prejudice you might have about this genre. So obviously, I do recommend this to every open-minded music fan out there, whether it's classical music, opera, ambient, jazz or post-rock. You just might have opened a door to a whole new world of musical discoveries. Personally, I like opening doors like that, and I also like this album. Now, I'm looking forward to a concert. I'm sure it will be nothing short of majestic.


Serge

black metal

2016 has already been a pretty good year for the black metal scene, or pretty much every scene for that matter. The genre has been overloaded with primitive and traditional albums, but also by shoegaze and psychedelic rock inspired black metal releases, giving the whole thing a huge amount of variation. However, I'd like to add an exceptional piece of work to the already massive list of albums that came out this year.  This sure is something else...

'Unholy Ghost Liturgy' is not a split. It's a collaboration album between Russian ambient/black/doom metal project Abigorum and American black metal/ambient formation Cryostasium. They composed the songs together, and there are quite a lot of those. The album contains no less than twenty tracks, eventually clocking off about about seventy minutes. Perhaps that might be a bit too long for some people, but not for me, certainly not when they come with up with plenty of variation and some downright strange tunes.

The album opens with something you could and would expect for this collaboration: harsh black metal, enhanced by keyboards and soundscapes, driving on fierce blast beats. Yet, there seems to be an underlying urge to experiment and it wouldn't take long for that urge to take the upperhand. 'Unholy Ghosts', the second track, already drags us into a mysterious and horrifying world. 'Liturgia' adds a lot to the gloomy atmosphere, perhaps because of the keyboards, or the haunted vocals or the slow, lingering tempo. 'Forgotten Lines' is just plain madness.

The album continues in that bizarre, experimental and somewhat confusing manner. I'm not going to write a song-by-song description here, but I will tell you that there's more musical insanity to come, possibly even more than you can handle. These projects keep on grabbing influences from all things experimental, psychedelic and dissonant. The endresult is something out of this world, something that will often leave you in a state of trance. But don't worry, many passage here are well suited for a decent headbanging portion.

For me, the best tracks on this album include the space-rock inspired 'Last Galaxy', the chaotic 'Essential Death' and the sheer insanity of 'Mysore's Cocoon' but I'd suggest  you check out the entire album. As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, this sure is something else and it sure is something that just might become one of the most surprising black metal released of the year. So go ahead, indulge yourself in absolute madness with this awesome cooperation.


​Serge

drone / ambient / post rock

Aah, the Belgians. What a bunch of drone geniuses we have. Dirk Serries, Stratosphere, CHVE, Syndrome, Ashtoreth,... the list is getting bigger and bigger. Now we can add another project to that list, one named Barst. After numerous live performances, splits and cassettes, this one-man project is now ready to release his first full-length. The album contains two tracks, each lasting for over twenty minutes. However, before you expect some nice, blissful ambient, please read on. This might be one of the most varied and surprising albums in its genre.

First off, the massive achievement wouldn't have been possible without a little help from his friends. On this album a heap of artists lent a hand: Mike Armine (Rosetta), Dehn Sora (Treha Sektori, Sembler Deah, …), Karen Willems (Inwolves), Mathieu Mathlovsky(Mathlovsky), Nicolas Van Meirhaeghe (Empusae, Onus, …), An-Sofie De Meyer (FÄR), Tokyo Oyo and Herr Man. If you know some of these acts, you might start realising just how varied this thing really is. I'll try to guide you through.

The album opens with a drone, and so far this was pretty much exactly what I expected. Yet, then it happens. In the first track alone, the music ranges from ambient to post metal to martial industrial to ritualistic chants. Besides the usual drone-ambient acts mentioned above, acts like Deutsch Nepal, Russian Circles, Sophia, Biosphere and even Dead Can Dance come to mind. This is a heap of influences pressed together, no wonder the track lasts this long. Track two even adds a dash of gloomy techno with sludge metal vocals to the whole thing. I've never danced to drone music before.

So yes, for this genre of music, 2016 has been a fantastic year, especially in Belgium. Lots of our most respected artists have released a brilliant album and, in my humble opinion, Barst tops it off in the most varied way imaginable. I can only recommend this gem to pretty much every fan of inventive and original music. You can be sure that this thing will end up somewhere in my end-year list, just like I'm sure that you will often stare at your speakers in absolute disbelief. 

Damn, I love this job...


​Serge

folk / psychedelic

Music is something strange. While most genres fit perfectly with the world in- and outside of my home, some albums seem to arrive from a completely different era. When I look outside and see the tall buildings, the construction cranes and the planes, pretty much every album I play fits in with that modern view. The one I'm trying to review here, does not. The combination of sound and view doesn't match. The cold, harsh and stressful outside world no longer coincides with the warm, blissful sounds coming from my speakers. The music takes me to another place, one quite similar to the image on the album cover. There are trees, lakes, wildlife and a blue sky with colorful birds. Everywhere inside this world, there is tranquility, beauty and love. What a contradiction, what a beautiful contradiction.

They call it "space folk" and in a way, I quite agree with that. They hail from Poland and have been around for a few years now. Their music seems inspired by ancient folk music but drags in so much more, from ambient to psychedelic rock and from drones to post rock and even neo-folk. Of course, that brings in a lot of variation, but it also provides the album with a nice and mysterious atmosphere. The overall sound is calm, relaxed and quite immersive. Don't expect heavy guitars or screaming vocals. Instead, expect to become entranced by this musical gem. When I have to compare this music to other acts, I guess bands like Wardruna, Barn Owl and even Mike Oldfield come to mind. Perhaps I should mention that I really don't know that many acts in this region.

Anyway, that's not really important. What does matter is the fact that 'Liście na Księżycu' is an excellent album, containing five tracks of which three are enormous pieces of music that stretch out beyond the known musical horizons. I can't really pick out a favorite track as, once again, I simply prefer to play the album in its entirety and allow myself to float along with the mysterious soundscapes and vague melodies. I suggest you do the same. 


​Serge

ambient / post-rock

All Is Empty And Silent is the most recent release by Sketchquiet, a project of Brazilian musician Mário Alencar. With nine songs, being them 2009, Remembrance, Never Leave Your Place, Drawings For Mary Hs, Dirty Island, Waterfall, Nausea Will Come, Empty + Silent and Flora Luna, what we have here is a very smooth, melancholic, reflexive and imposing atmosphere, generated by a thin layer of a very virtuous, diluted, disciplined and well restrained soft rock.

With an imperative calmness, beautiful melodies, and idyllic guitar lines, viciously exposed at the poetic heart of horizontal and delicate nuances, destitute of sonorous embraces, the lightness of his mordacity while playing seems to truthfully answer to a higher appeal, amazingly highlighted at the serenity of a cosmic sound unbound to an invisible existence. With marvelous melodies never constrained by solitary demands of sorrowful audacities, All Is Empty And Silent probably has, as its most lucid quality, a strongest guitar presence, marked by a vivid strength of sonorous precision and the urgent eagerness of pungent and percentile artistic expressions, with an impressive musical solidity, that predominates all the way throughout the record, in a hostile   sound that exhilarates poetry in each and every note of its delicate and sober songs. 

A very decent and cohesive work, that displays a coherent degree of musical proposition, this album also presents to its audience an interesting configuration of style, that, despite being constant and somewhat stable, is also restless and rebellious, revealing a remarkable contrast of behavioral solicitude in shape and form at the nucleus of its musical inception, albeit in a very discreet and sympathetic constriction.

With enchanting, very devised, lucid and well-constructed songs, All Is Empty And Silent really reevaluates in a modern shape and in a very singular basic outline the principles of soft and indie rock, as well as instrumental music mainly based on guitar. With a genuine touch of originality and passion, that passes over the cosmic sentences created by Mário in each and every note of his songs, this musician can perpetuate full universes of ethereal transcendental alignments at the dense fusion that comprehends the vividness of his creative processes, that eventually passes through his the fingers, on the verge of executing the sometimes impressionistic cords that made his music sound exactly the way it sounds. 

All Is Empty And Silent, undoubtedly, is a very inventive and peculiar work, where creativity has no boundaries. A very intriguing and exponentially restless album, abundant with the characteristically detailed vividness that the style asks for all the time, but rarely finds in such a formidable and masterful proficiency.      
     

​Wagner

ambient / electronic / experimental

A six tracks compilation (with a hidden bonus video) that has musicians Clinker, Giacomelli, Sonologyst, Bedtime for Robots, Kshatriy and Downscope, here we have another exponential crescent level of fearless experimental insinuation. With no rules or boundaries, this diversified, spiritual and futuristic ambient album is marked by a transcendental calmness, and an unbreakable disposition to take its listeners far beyond the ordinary levels of existence, and throughout the entire cosmos. 

With remarkable peculiarities, this cosmically balanced ambient album builds entire universes in apparently simple rhythms, and everything you have to do is to let yourself go, anywhere these tracks will lead you. Of course, these six songs are from different artists, so obviously you will feel that each one of them has its own astounding identity. With the prospect of being categorized as a promising light, with the sensorial landscapes that the tracks bought into the darkness of its shapes, here we have a great set of melodic prisms, conglomerated in the vicinity of a marvelous layout of infinite serenity and fragile cataclysm. Nonetheless, being exceedingly concentrated in an intense panel of ambient cosmogony, this compilation is made to please a very specific audience, remarkable and avid enthusiasts of ambient space music. Otherwise, it will sound very boring to anyone who is not pleased with the genre. 

An adventurous and miraculous journey, Meditation Room is a very intelligent compilation. Like the title itself explains, it can be a great guideline for sessions of meditation too, since its deeply calm and peaceful tracks are experienced journeys that can teach you how to travel to the interior of your own soul. But you have really to detach yourself from everything, and submerge your spirit into the dimensional vastness of the music, to enjoy this experience meaningfully, gracefully and efficiently. 

Since every track is usually very long, each one of them is a journey in its own right, and you don’t have to necessarily listen to all of these tracks in a mandatory sequence, if you don’t want to. You are totally free to do “separate” travels if you want, and I think this will amplify your experience while traveling through the vast surreal dialogues of each one of these marvelous songs.  

Meditation Room really is that kind of album perfect to listen in the dark, with your eyes closed. If you let yourself go, the music will lead you throughout an imperial journey of transcendence, peacefulness and calmness, and your soul will eventually heal to the point of fusion, as you stay bound to wake up in a completely different world.  


​Wagner

dark ambient / drone

Another project of Spanish musician Vadym Sycantrhope, City No Signal, released under his nom de plume of Enearth, is a very smooth, linear and transcendental album, severely different from everything he has made so far! Filled with a serene soundscape, that has, a little disguised in the atmosphere of his music, a severe, but hidden layer of anxiety, that subtlety explodes in each and every note of the panoramic conscience that his dimensional sound vastly explores, this album has a beautiful nervous antagonism, that hides in a poetic display of omniscience a delicate and fragile serenity, aligned with a cosmic strength that relies over an afflictive sideline of majestic agony, where your feelings predominantly have to be exceedingly prepared, for the journey you are about to endure. 

A marvelous ambient album, permeated by a lucid fury objectified by a soft calmness and an outward uneasiness, City No Signal is filled with a very discreet demand in form, shape and character. In a hallucinatory device that disperses darkness everywhere its harmonies seems to go, this album is made primarily by fearless, but very insinuating rhythms, lost in a perpetual night of doom and demise. Unrestrained by a vicinity of shadows that never obliterates realms of haze, an agonizing tension, a sublime hostile expectation and a deranged feeling of frightful affliction will make you feel bound to a life in a very different world.

City No Signal is an album perfect for ambient music enthusiasts that really love a more obscure, sinister, dismal and unknown approach to the genre. An astounding album, corroborated by a funeral procession that will lead you into the darkness of an infinite urban night, the conspicuous rhythms that we have here will make you feel trapped into another dimension, a more tough and difficult one. Nonetheless, you will understand the proficiency of a style that never gets tired of exploring into the depths of its musical confluences the never ending nuances of the most depressing, lugubrious and restless side of existence, in a sonorous stream of sensorial  efficiency that has produced an exceedingly singular cornerstone of downward abysmal atmospheres.      

With melodies that resonates the intensity of a darkness that dwells into the highlight of a deep penumbra, City No Signal is an album that impersonates the light of a serene tension, filled with the blackened skies of an easier disgrace, dispatched by the sincerity of a ruined and painful expectation. So, no matter how far you can go, you will rapidly perceive that this is a work that only the most intuitive ones can understand, and the brightly genuine followers will appreciate.       


​ Wagner

electronic / ambient

bandcamp

Released recently, on November 16, Wasteland is the second full length of a talented Russian musician, known only as Tremulaant. With thirteen tracks, being them Desolated, Cargo Cult, Retrovirus, Syndicate, Utopia, Echoes, Mood Swings, Disturbia, Manipulated Living, Afterglow, Uniform Dreams, Damaged Goods and Hyperpower, Wasteland is a more sinister and shadowy album, with melodies settled in a more distant, majorly permissive and bizarre configuration.

Nonetheless, it has some beautiful melodies. With the predominance of serene and calm rhythms, on Wasteland, the listener can experience a quieter and gentle soul transfiguration, on harmonies where discreet electronic beats are disguised in the silent blasts of a more uniform cohesive dynamic. Characteristically more ambient than its predecessor, Wasteland is a more ecstatic album, that brings on the tenure of its interesting musical subject a more mysterious and exotic approach. With songs shorter than usual, this album is way more influenced on minimalist electronics than its predecessor, showing an audacious degree of change in style. With some beautiful melodies all the way through, Wasteland certainly can be considered a very good album, and a decent surprise, that greatly summarizes the astonishing musical abilities of this unknown musician, that presents himself only by the nom de plume of Tremulaant. Exploring an intelligent level of experimentation, here we can testify the surprising evolution the artist has consciously dedicated upon his music, since he works towards very different spheres of sound.     
A little ecstatic sometimes, nonetheless, Wasteland is a great artistic achievement, that rationalizes a severe punctuation in what concerns a vibrant and lucid artistry. With tracks brilliantly conceived, and walking towards a moonlight of sonorous magnificence, what we have here is a groundbreaking confluence of musical intuition, working towards a self-sufficient goal of experience, composition and inspiration.

With tracks reminiscent of smooth electronica brightly executed at the zone of a highly diminished and ethereal horizon, concentrated in a volatile dose of simple connective originality, as an ordinary sadness that comes and goes, Wasteland is a fruitful sonorous minimalist electronic ambition, made to sound as a purely evocative state of the art realm. Bound to break rules, and sound freshly provoking, rebuilding and reconstructing in the innermost intricate details the vivid colors of opaque harmonies never to be found outside this particular work,  Wasteland is a very good album, inevitably bound to conquer all the hearts of experimental electronica lovers all over the world. 


Wagner

post metal / progressive

Winter is coming, soon snow will cover the lands and ice will form on the lakes and ponds. In Belgium, that will probably result in cold, slippery brown mush everywhere and a thin layer of ice on some ponds, not enough to skate or have any kind of fun with. That's why we prefer staying at home, lighting the fireplace and getting drunk while listening to good music. We are a simple kind of people; as long as the music is good enough.

This album by Irish one-man project Arcade Messiah is just the thing we need to get through the winter. It's one of those albums that tell elaborate stories, mostly without uttering a single word. The project is founded by KingBathmat frontman John Bassett and drags in heaps of influences from the gargantuan world of rock music. Yet, since the music is mostly instrumental, it might be both easy and correct to place this thing into the post rock and metal corners.

That being said, fans of bands like Pelican, Russian Circles and Cult Of Luna will definitely appreciate this music, but I'd also like to recommend this to others. There are elements of grunge in opener 'Revolver' while 'Deliverance' takes a strong progressive stand. Here and there I can hear influences from doom and sludge metal too and the whole stoner rock scene is never far away. Finally, there simply is a great dose of riffing goodness present here.

The tracks are well built-up and have the immersive nature of many of its highly acclaimed predecessors in the post-whatever scene. I have no favorite track since they all fit very well together, forming one big concept, which is exactly what I love so much about this genre. So, a shout out to fans of anything between Radiohead, Alice In Chains, the previous mentioned bands and Godspeed! You Black Emperor: this is a great album, a perfect companion for all your daily activities.


​Serge

black metal / crust punk

symphonic metal

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funk / alternative

synthpop / electronic

post punk / alternative / indie

hard rock

black metal / shoegaze

grunge / alternative rock / punk

rock 

bandcamp

post punk / alternative rock

alternative rock / noise rock

hard rock / heavy metal

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grindcore

bandcamp

With Travis Ryan of Cattle Decapitation on vocals, San Diego grindcore outfit Anal Trump comes up with a short and vicious assault. The longest song on this album is eighteen seconds long and I had to listen four times while writing this thing. So yes, this is sick, gore grindcore in perfect Anal Cunt / Napalm Death tradition. It comes with a lot of shit that someone named Donald Trump has been spewing out, like 'I'd Date My Daughter', 'Build That Wall' and 'Breastfeeding Is Gay'. So if you miss Seth Putnam, hate Donald Trump, think music should be torturous and have no problem with the fact that downloading this release will last longer than actually playing it, you need this.

black metal / thrash metal

black metal

punk / alternative rock

doom / sludge

​Serge

indie / alternative / rock

Dream News is the most recent album by Attic Abasement, an American melancholic indie rock band from Rochester, New York. With eleven tracks, being them Guarantee Jesus, Statuesque Mess, Own Your Enemies, Show Up to Leave, So Far, Abigail Folger, Inverted Youth, A Way, Endless & Perfect, Neon Trim and News Continues, on this work, Attic Abasement levels up the usual low and pessimistic mood of their music, to make a sound reminiscent of Counting Crows, The Strokes, Belle and Sebastian, Bob Dylan and The Wallflowers, but striking a different level of uncommon originality and sarcastic suburban lyricism, gripped by sorrow, disdain and ironic stubbornness. 

With short songs, and an agonizing trip of sonorous tranquility, on Dream News, Attic Abasement brings a very different vibe to postmodern indie rock, to sound exactly as it is, but in a more genuinely conservative and closed way. Defying their own intentions towards a more musical lavishness, but being, on the other hand, very capable of sounding serious and even dramatic, Attic Abasement sings their mutual love for ordinary existence on this album, without exaggeration or superficiality, elevating, in the process, the aesthetics of “ordinary” common art and commercial radio music.

Dream News, as a result, is a very good album, amazing at the glow of its own direct results. As a very idiosyncratic and peculiar indie record filled with the gaps of normal existence, I guess you can label this work as non-punk album for punk rockers, since it depicts an aura of rebellion, albeit a quiet one, hidden in the neglected sorrow of a gray horizon.

I wouldn’t dare to say that this is music for teenagers, although you are way more inclined to be appreciative of this kind of music when you are really, really, really young. Nevertheless, what they achieve here is no minor musical beauty, and I certainly have to acknowledge them as an important indie rock band, filled with charisma, and, more importantly, that don’t fake the emotions behind their songs. Of course, while Dream News isn’t exactly a major record, you can obtain a good level of joyful amazement listening to it. Maybe the angry youth that leaves inside of you, or the misunderstood rebellious teenager that died within your soul so many decades earlier, can react better to this sound, as he is easy to wake up to this songs, while remembering that desolate afternoons after school, where he had just been expelled, or had heard a family discussion again. Yes, undoubtedly, Dream News has charm, simplicity, and teenage restless incomprehension. I think this is the best definition for this album, yet!                 


​Wagner

stoner rock / sludge metal

Endless Descent is the most recent album by Junior Bruce, a stoner/ sludge metal American band from Florida, released by A 389 Records. With ten tracks, being them Lapis Philosophorum, Lion's Teeth, Thirteen Zeros, Of The Deep, Of The Earth, The Worthless Ones, Interlude, Night Hag, Lesser Key and the eponymous Endless Descent, this album is the most pure, resolute, unforgiving, sacrificial and absolute demonstration of fury, wrath and brutality on the genre, done to please each and every single adorable sludge metal enthusiast of this world. With a corrosive, direct, strident and powerful energy, made to destroy everything on its way, Endless Descent is an aggressive and epic album, made to set fire on earth, and to effervesce the brains of every single sound maniac crazy about it. With an endless amount of ammunition, the blasts shot by the sick rhythmic dissonances of these tracks will engulf you immediately. And you don’t even will have the time to breath, to know or to understand what passed by you. 

With powerful and grotesquely insane vocals, and guitar lines that seems to be in flames all the way through, this is the album made to produce earthquakes in your brain, in your mind and in your soul. With a great amount of ecstasy, exhilaration and rapture, this is sludge metal ready to wake up the dead. An insane fury deconstruct each track, composing a savage soundscape upon which everything descends, which makes the title of this album not only suggestible, but perfect for the atmosphere created and evoked by it. Undoubtedly epic in all the arrangements of its restless fury, Endless Descent is objective and sincere: an album that immediately, in the very first seconds of it, communicates to the audience the reasons and motives upon which its sound stands for. Shaping every melody that sees on its way, the visceral corrosion on this album is not just genuine, but tantamount to epic, being an original ordeal of lucid creation in the annals of the genre. 

A great album, that seeks for a darkness hidden in the despair of consciousness, Endless Descent is a voracious scream of musical vitality, never appearing to conform to common or ordinary standards, since every track on this album alludes to principles eager of a genuine collision towards a greater creative meaning.  

With hostile and hallucinatory devices dispersed all along these marvelous, vicious, furious and aggressive tracks, Endless Descent is an amazing and formidable album, that announces a new era for sludge metal. As a genuine and fearless gem of originality, being inconspicuous in all the elements of its audacious explosions of wrath, Endless Descent, by Junior Bruce, really deserves to be placed among the greatest works ever produced on the history of the genre.                  


​Wagner

stoner rock / doom

Indeterminate is the most recent album by Cloud, an American Stoner metal band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, released in the end of October. With five tracks, being them Indeterminate, Relapse, Desert Weed, Otherworldly and Yggdrasil, this album certainly has everything a stunning stoner metal band has to offer you. With dirty, pervasive, aggressive and efficient guitar lines, the distorted abysmal rhythms efficiently underlines a grotesque and surreal sound, marked by an instrumental embodiment of diffuse melodies, outspoken by the most dangerous, constrained and unexpected tracks ever created on the genre.

With a little mixture of postmodern metal and southern rock, Cloud really reintroduces a gray atmosphere on the genre, but with a rude nostalgic flavor added to it. With a gray horizon of harmonies developing in a constant mood unbreakable and corrosive rhythms, the songs on Indeterminate are typical stoner rock/ metal songs, but exponentially framed in more peculiar mannerisms. With a slow and calm brutality that shapes anger in a more abrasive style, here we have five sonorous pictures impressively detailed and sculpted. Dispersing a more sagacious and diluted form of musical eagerness, this album calculatedly heals all the voracious famine of stoner rock enthusiasts, that here have a genuine resurrection of a style way too explored, abused and exasperated in several ways, all over the course of its existence. 

With an axiomatic energy that works at the course – and not against – of powerful rhythms established over the creative stream of the work, these five songs are filled with the most surreal and captivating vibes and elements of stoner strength and authenticity, shaped at the core of an intuitive wisdom that really understands and foresees the waking of the marvelous components of the music. A forgiving ruin that adapts itself to be greater than the sky itself, if you dare to see this album in this perspective. 

Sincerely, I see no major flaws here. Indeterminate is Stoner metal done right, with the grotesqueness of aggressive guitars perfectly aligned in an antagonistic dimension of beauty and hermeticism, directly envisioned in a lucid coherence that really honors the genre, as well as all of its most avid enthusiasts. An awesome work that really values every single guitar note, Indeterminate is a great album, amalgamated and infuriated at the very own invisible cornerstone of all the virtues that made Stoner metal/ rock to be what it came to be. Undoubtedly, an album to be proud of. You can be positive about that.             
     

​Wagner

electronic / ambient

bandcamp

A terrific and very smooth album by Tremulaant, an unknown Russian musician that makes a wonderful mixture of different genres, like electronica, ambient music and indietronica, all perfectly inserted in a very dynamic and consistent layer of experimental beauty and objectivism, Shivers has sixteen tracks: Love Is Not Enough, Zephyr, Era Vulgaris, Enemy, Pale Memories, December, Horizon, Love Is Not Enough (Again), Sehnsucht, Doppelganger, Low Profile, Aurora, Warm Whale, Hopes, Insignia and Venom Of Tradition. A little more than one hour long, Shivers manages to be a categorical album, filled with an exotic and philosophic proficiency, that organizes in the hidden harmonies of its opacity a fragile beauty, underlined over a poetic attempt to capture an epic moment of existence.

With beauty, melancholy and serenity, all of these sixteen tracks are compact configurations of ephemeral moments, perfectly understood over a craft of genius rhythmical consonance. A marvelous journey into the inner depths of an emotional rapture, Shivers captures each and every soul of colorful monastic harmonies, compromised over a feeling of sonorous expansive vastness. Otherwise, you could just feel yourself to be lying down in an ethereal universe, where everything you see is made of a deranged breakdown, of all the things you never felt. Surprising the listener with a meltdown of different styles, albeit arranged in a coherent harmonic layout, this album is an unbelievable masterpiece, that will take your soul into an everlasting journey of exhilarating paradox and divine exultation. 

Impossible to be completely understood, this album has so much mesmerizing tonalities and relentless boundaries, that you cannot fully comprehend it consciously. With a remarkable audacity that has everything imposed over a sonorous stratosphere of remarkable wonder, Shivers is not just a state of the art work, impregnated with a highly stunning degree of philosophical sensibility, but explodes within your soul while creates an inextricable universe of innovative  colors under your head. And this is just the first impression. If you listen to this album more than one time, you will just feel yourself ashamed of having not listened to this before.

An immensurable work of art, never to be duplicated or imitated, Shivers is a golden pearl of the underground. An unparalleled album that no other work in the history of music can match, here we have the perfect matrimony of a highly ingenious technical ability with the uttermost emotional sonorous intuition that anybody in this world could ever think of. With prominent allegorical melodies, that reproduces several states of the soul, Shivers is a colossal and dimensional masterpiece, with no rules to be held above its own principles of beauty, grace, timelessness and sensibility.       



Wagner

psychedelic rock / krautrock

I can't tell you how much I love the recent psychedelic rock revival. It feels as if the seventies never ended. I was born in those days, 1974 to be exact, but it feels like today I'm finally appreciating the music people created back then. A friend of mine often comes up with classics I've never heard of before and on my turn  I blast his "they-don't-make-music-like-that-anymore" prejudice with amazing musical journeys.

This album by Ohio, USA residents Eye is one of those albums. The band is rooted deeply in the psychedelic rock scene. This full-length, their third, came to be after a few line-up changes, writing sessions and jam sessions.  It contains five tracks, most of them lasting for four to six minutes, except for the epic anthem 'As Sure As The Sun' which is a twenty-seven minutes lasting space rock opera which will take you to dimensions unseen.

The album opens with something between a track and an intro, named 'Book Of The Dead'.  This instrumental perfectly sets the tone for this album. It's dreamy, somewhat gloomy too but most of all it prepares the listener for an amazing trip through the universe of Eye. 'Kill the Slavemaster' follows in perfect Hawkwind meets Hendrix tradition. This song sounds so vintage that you couldn't pick it out on a 'best of psychedelic rock' compilation from the seventies.

From then on, Eye guides us through beautiful guitar solos, organ and mellotron passages, almost shamanic singing and immersive rock music. There are even several synth sequences that remind me of acts like Tangerine Dream or Klaus Schulze. Other bands that come to mind include Ash Ra Tempel, Gong and Grobschnitt. That being said, yes, you can easily give this album a place in your free-floating record cabinet.

My favorite track remains the massive closer 'As Sure As The Sun', which also reminds me a little of Pink Floyd. However, I think it's safe to say that this whole album is a masterpiece of psychedelic rock, regardless of what era it comes from. I know that we'll be hearing this thing a lot more in the Merchants Of Air headquarters from now on. So yes, I suggest you pre-order this thing right now, you won't regret it.


​Serge

black metal

Gazing Light Eternity is the most recent album by Italian Atmospheric Black Metal project Chiral, released in the end of October. With extremely rapid melodies – but, astoundingly, completely destitute of aggressiveness –, erudite and conversely dilapidated guitars, a serene soundscape of painful beauty, a philosophical melancholy, and a very rock’n’roll influenced sound, Chiral brings to the table the most unlikely musical components for a black metal project. And, nonetheless, what we hear on this album is an absolute masterpiece, profoundly engaged at the root of a very artistic monumental device.

Despite some melodic uniformity, with little to no variation, which gives the impression of a sound aiming to absorb and transform raw black metal into the most proficient and dreamlike state, Gazing Light Eternity dissolves and converts the most latent layers of beauty in Atmospheric Black Metal. With a musicality that transcends opacity, and gives to the listener the most powerful and lucid side of a transcendental genre that searches in the deepest emotions the inspiration for its magic, this album, filled with melodic nuances and impressions, that transcends sentimental boundaries and deconstruct virtual horizons, takes the genre into a free and expansive zone, like you never heard before. And this will certainly leave a profound impression into the most solitary delusions of your soul.

With four tracks, that divide the work in four parts – The Gazer, The Haze, The Crown and The Hourglass –, each and every aspect of these tracks spreads serenity, enthusiasm and gratitude towards a very serene, reflexive and philosophical kind of sound. Somehow, at a certain point, the work seems lost in an excessive path of desolation, but suddenly, a lacerating guitar corrodes the air, reminding you what kind of brutal music you are listening too. 

Expounding very intrinsic characteristics of his art, Chiral, with this Gazing Light Eternity, buys a transcendental atlas for the sake of a cosmic harmony that strikes heaven with the winds of a giant pearl. Revealing the sensibility of a supreme art that rests in the fields of freezing ghostly forests, these philosophical lessons in sound will transport you to very isolated worlds of gloom and despair. Nonetheless, these are promising places, where all the shadows are skeptical of overcoming their own sincerities. A marvelous work that embraces the light and the shadow within your soul, Gazing Light Eternity, by Shiral, is an unbelievable album, that creates one billion suns below the surface of hope. You will feel yourself transported to a kinder, peaceful and gentle dimension, while listening to it.         


​Wagner

death metal / black metal

Kohti Kotiani Kaaosta is a six tracks album, recently released by Finnish death metal band Deathkin. Brutal death metal from the best kind, the work is really greatly impressive, for the astoundingly mathematical, but constantly broken rhythms that summarizes the constraints of the music. With a highly original approach, interestingly dynamic and unraveling a very unique style, Deathkin really conducts the listener throughout a very intriguing sonorous journey, marked by a constant change of pace and rhythms, revealing remarkable creative nuances, impressively free and unrestrained. 

Despite their impressive pace, and a curious style that becomes refreshingly innovative, shaped by a spontaneous fury – not a plastic one, like we commonly see among a lot of bands in the genre – the album, unfortunately, has its fair share of boring moments. Nonetheless, shows itself to be a fruitful vigor of fresh air to the genre, and a great acquisition, besides an irreprehensible foundation, for the most ardent enthusiasts of death metal.

But like I said above, the album does resent itself from a certain monotony. In some peculiar passages, the stilted sound becomes so terrifyingly tense and uniform, that you can’t manage to unscramble all the messy sound, to open a corridor or a stone passage to musical coherence, in between these lacerating and tiresome rhythmical moments, as you feel momentarily lost in the opacity of such a convoluted heaviness.

Nonetheless, with the exception of these particular passages, the album manages to be decent, energetic, cohesive and competently produced. With rapid guitars and aggressive vocals being the strongest elements of the album, prominently shaping the corrosive, hostile and furious rhythms that so vehemently dilacerates each and every atom of sound present on this work, the other musical components, like background vocals and drums, manages to accompany and complement quite well the primary instruments, delivering a great exposition of sonorous wrath, aggression and ruthless exhilaration. 

Unfortunately, due to its intense heaviness, I don’t think this album can please anyone outside the genre. Certainly destined to attract the most brutal and vicious enthusiasts of dark and extreme death metal, my final evaluation on Kohti Kotiani Kaaosta is that this is a very good album, that really embellishes and aggregates more fiercely components to death metal, foraging a genuinely new level of brutality, that hopefully can propel the genre into a higher level of artistic audacity, integrity and originality.     



​Wagner

electronic / ambient

Downtempo Cherries is a bright, astounding and recently released Chill out/ Ambient compilation album by Greek label Cosmicleaf Records. With ten tracks – being them E 75, by Fourth Dimension, Freedom, by Stimulus Timbre, Feel the groove, by Zero Cult, Go Back, by Dense, Trace, by Kick Bong, Pelagio, by Stefan Torto, Mentor, by Maluns, No Borders, by Side Liner & Aviron, Synthonauts, by Cydelix and Suduaya, and Masala Putri, by Chronos – what we have here is certainly a great compilation, able to satisfy you in each and every possible aspect. With a smooth and very soft sound, bounded in a futuristic style, with cosmic and transcendental grooves, this compilation reunites the greatest exponents of the genre.

With a versatile charismatic sound, bound to a tranquility never seen or heard before, this album is beyond incredible: despite its calm and superbly lucid atmospheres, the record is never boring. Enthusiastically sincere, and transcending melodic lapses of time, each and every track are a sensitive journey towards the unknown. A profound and vivid travel throughout the soul of the genre, in its purest form. 

Viciously epic, and amazingly demanding, on the other hand, this tracks are as soft and deep as the best masterpieces of the genre could possibly be. With extricate and detailed nuances, colorful rainbows and detached semicircles emerge from the desirable holes that emanates from the dreamlike notes that compose the magic atmospheres and powerful harmonies, that denotes the universe on which these melodies came from. A parallel universe where colors, dreams, sounds and sensibilities are bound to be just one inextricable thing. 

Inevitably, you are doomed to be bored, if this is not you’re genre of music. With an understandable uniformity that captures a hallucinatory and organically organized shape of harmonies and balances, these tracks will sound the same, if you’re not really into the chill out modern sphere of sound. With an intensely conceptualized stream of protuberant styles, that, at a certain level, restrain boundaries and limits to a very distinct sound frame, these chill out ghosts and dreams may leave you intoxicated while listening to it. Unfortunately, what we have here is a higher dose of the genre, in an exceedingly concentrated form, which makes this compilation implausible to be appreciated by newcomers or amateurs alike. Nonetheless, it will sound perfect for the ones already introduced, familiarized or enthusiastically crazy about the genre! A perfect compilation, no doubt about it!              


Wagner

post rock

Dusty Monuments is a full length album released by Signal from Europa, a Post-rock band from Gdańsk, Poland. With four amazing tracks, REMGlacier, Time as a Creator, Bilocation and I saw, I believe..., Dusty Monuments is an amazing, graceful and compelling work. Splendidly sculptured, and heavier than usual post rock, but filled with balanced and colorful harmonies, this is a beautiful record, with captivating elements, that rely ostensibly on the serene and delicate horizon of melancholic rhythms. Amazingly created, and delivering the flavor of music dilapidated at the height of a virtuous sensibility, what we have here is one of the greatest post rock albums of the year.

With a poetic and dreary heaviness, bound by the collision of sonorous atoms, Dusty Monuments is unusual post rock. With an obscure layer of creative fertility that propels the sound to be cosmically organic, and as expansive as the rhythms manages to be, its ordained and beautifully cohesive harmonies seems lost in an unrelated chain of space and time, where you feel yourself destitute of everything sad and senseless. With a sonorous bow that breaks the universe in atoms of melodic tunes, this work really honors the genre, being a gift for each and every enthusiast of post rock that exists out there. With a poignant serenity that points out spheres and shapes of lucid dreams, the musical ordeal that builds worlds from ethereal sounds will leave you inebriate with such levels of sonorous beauty, where the end of the universe merges with the beginning, and everything that falls apart within you is rearranged to form something new. 

A marvelous and impressive work, that really outstands itself from other works in the genre, the impressive calmness that leaves the melodies enters in your soul profoundly, setting your spirit into another level of consciousness. With an impressive degree of philosophical proficiency, the sonorous integrity that intercepts the void within the molecules of your soul will craft one thousand different universes, under the light of the sun that you kept untouched in the hidden layers of your embellished memory. 

A great work, from a promising band, the delicate beauty in Dusty Monuments certainly manages to be striking. A fearless devotion that generated a sonorous universe of delightful horizons, this album deserves to be among the best in the genre, for its intensity, purity, clarity and efficiency. A worthy paroxysm, that took post rock to another level.  


​Wagner