Vinter Records – 5th September 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
The post-rock boom feels like a long, long time ago now. Perhaps because it was: realistically, we’re talking about nearly twenty years since Explosions in The Sky and Her Name is Calla were super-hot topics. I discovered HNIC supporting iLiKETRAiNS on tour circa 2007, and Maybeshewill via their split 12” with Her Name is Calla, before seeing them playing with AndSoIWatchYouFromAfar… There are always chains and sequences, but the post-rock bubble burst in a tidal wave of oversaturation maybe around 2009. It all got a bit samey. But there was – and still is – always room for a band that take a genre template and take it somewhere else, offering something different, instead of a template-based rehash. Enter Osak:Oslo, who most certainly offer something different. Silt and Static is nuanced, but at the same time forceful.
There’s nothing like going all-out epic on an opening track, and that’s what precisely what Osak:Oslo do here, with the eight-minute forty ‘Biting In’, which begins with some enticing, chiming guitar that’s quintessential post-rock in every way, but then the rhythm section kicks in, and it drives along straight ahead, riding a solid motorik groove for a bit. After taking it down in the mid-section, they come back in, driving harder than before, a sprawling desert-rock soundscape expanding like a straight road headed to the horizon. Hell yes! You feel this. Exhilarating is the word.
They take things slower and bring more weight on ‘Days Adrift’, but still conjure rich layers of atmosphere, and bring things together with a chunky, chugging, bass-driven groove. In contrast, ‘Salt Stains’ is altogether more jangly, indie, at least to begin, and then, less than a minute in, a solid riff powers in, topped by soaring lead guitar work.
Over the course of the album’s nine expansive tracks, Osak:Oslo demonstrate a real knack for beefy riffery – nothing overloading, hugely overdriven, distorted or gritty, but just big, bold, solid and defined by a sense of forward trajectory, and what’s most remarkable is the way the band arrived at this work:
Recorded spontaneously, Silt and Static captures the band at their most stripped-down and unfiltered, balancing atmospheric fragility with crushing depth. With tape rolling and no roadmap, the album emerged naturally, giving shape to a sound that’s both deeply personal and bleak yet beautiful.
‘Bleak yet beautiful’ is a fair summary, but establishing, or unravelling, precisely what’s personal on an instrumental work is not easy, or sometimes even possible, although it is clear that certain elements, sounds, structures, transitions, which hit in a particular way are deeply evocative, often moving. But as a listener, those moments feel personal and are rooted in one’s own experience, one’s own individual response. I write this as someone who has sat with friends, playing songs saying, as I practically burst with enthusiasm, “Wait… there! That’s the key change!” or “That’s where the distortion comes in!” or “There! There!”, to be met with… mixed results. Is that moment which floors me the same one which the creators feel is the pivotal point in the song, the one which articulates, through the medium of sound alone, that deep-seated, complex emotion which has been tormenting your psyche for months, or even years? I suppose it doesn’t really matter. What matters – for artists and listener alike – is that connection, achieving that vital emotional resonance, where the music speaks.
‘Resonance in Ash’ slips into shoegazey territory, but also offers the most potent swell of noise that threatens the eardrums, bursting into a ragged explosion of noise, bordering on post-metal and racing to a blistering crescendo, and despite being one of the album’s shortest songs, ‘The Onward Strike’ feels like one of the most immense. Then again, there’s ‘Break and Sink’, which goes all-out to crush… It’s riffy, it’s heavy, and it lands hard. The bass… it grinds, alright.
The beauty – and creative success – of Silt and Static is that it succeeds on both levels. Because of the bold riffery – never succumbing to the post-rock cliché of the slow-build and epic crescendo, but instead forging these strong, cinematic, rock-orientated bursts of energy which are immersive, transportative, and reach far beyond genre confines. Silt and Static is an imaginative, inspired work, and the circumstances of its creation make it even more remarkable. It’s the work of a band operating with a rare level of cohesion, and it’s pretty special.
AA
Aural Aggravation 