Posts Tagged ‘instrumental’

Watch: ‘Fearmonger’ by Darkplace

Posted: 21 May 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Darkplace is a mysterious new Swedish dark dream pop/post-punk group who created a conceptual debut album inspired by the bleak landscape of the Stockholm suburbs that birthed them.

Centred around an alternative reality – or just the grim present and future? – and entitled About The End Of The World, the album is being unveiled gradually over the coming months via a series of imaginative visuals based on animated digital paintings for each of its eleven tracks.

Having recently released ‘Arken över Hesselby’ (The Ark Over Hesselby), the video for which presented the outskirts of a city haunted by an unknown aerial presence, the clip for brand new single ’Fearmonger’ takes us into the heart of that city, presenting an apocalyptic scenario as ominous sirens wail and a lone soldier flees the prying ‘eye in the sky’ of an airship.

The Swedish national alarm system is still tested on a quarterly basis by the army. A familiar sound to all Swedes, the sound of the siren has the nickname ‘Hesa Fredrik’. Darkplace state: “After trying to improve Hesa Fredrik, the government learned that the new horns scared the shit out of people.”

Although rooted in late 80s/early 90s indie styles, Darkplace incorporate a variety of other genres into their sound. However, for the members of this highly secretive group, it is not just about the music. They perceive themselves as more an art project that happens to be exploring and commenting on the state of the world through their chosen mediums of music and video.

Most of the short instrumental pieces on the forthcoming album were written with specific storyboards in mind, with the band revealing that “we started creating the art before we had the music for both singles to date, so the tracks were written as soundtracks to the animation.”

The art itself is a multi-layered process that involves photography, sculpting, oil painting, digital editing and animation. Using apps like Nomad Sculpt to create it before exporting scene specific angles and imported into Procreate to be painted, they add: “we use oil paintbrushes and paint over the photo. It is layers upon layers and it gets messy. Exporting gets even messier since we want depth in the scenes and need to export them in layered depths. A few scenes in this project have been animated frame by frame and it has taken almost two years to complete.”

Watch ‘Fearmonger’ here:

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Break_Fold – This Was Forever

Posted: 1 March 2023 in Albums
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3rd March 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

Where does the time go? I type this with a rising panic in my chest, the same one which kicks me awake at 5:30 most mornings. I may often panic about the mounting chores and deadlines, the crumbling state of my house and cost for repairs, but mostly I panic about time and its passage. How is it 2023? How is it March already?

However much time you think you have, you always have so much less.

And so the arrival of the new break_fold album is something which both elates and trips me. It’s been six years almost to the month since the first break_fold release, 07_07_15 – 13_04_16 , which in turns reminds me it was thirteen years since Tim Hann’s previous musical venture, I Concur, were an active band. What happened? The simple answer is, of course, life. It happens when you’re not looking. It’s hard not to feel nostalgic for that time: it was a period of discovery. The Brudenell was still emerging as a venue, and putting on lots of local acts, and at the launch of their debut album, I Concur sounded immense, like they could be the next U2 – only not cocks and unencumbered by a Bono, of course. You get the idea. They were just SO good. But then… life. It gets ahead of you.

Tim Hann has been tinkering as break_fold for a while now, because ultimately creatives can’t simply stop creating, even if it’s at night working in the cupboard under the stairs or the shed. You can’t help it. However tired you are from work, life, parenting, there’s an itch that can’t be scratched any other way, and ultimately, it has to be done.

And it’s been done nicely here, a year on from the release of the single ‘Welwala’, which features on This Was Forever and again, I have to pinch myself. Again, a year already?

The title – and perhaps it’s just me – bears an element of melancholy. It was forever, but now…? Well, nothing is forever, and the realisation that something forever has a finite existence is something sad and regrettable. The title track spins together shimmering top synths over stuttering beats and rolling mid-range create a dynamic tension and a certain sense of drama.

This Was Forever is a set of solid instrumental electro with some deep grooves and some dark, jittering moments. It is, overall, easy on the ear, ‘Everything Affects Everything’ mines a dark seem that’s pure 80s movie soundtrack. Indeed, the vibe is strongly eighties for the most part, not least of all with the cracking snare sounds that drive some of the faster pieces – but then again, this type of one-man synth-based style is ultimately contemporary, possible due to the wealth of inexpensive software that has meant that making music is possible for anyone with a laptop. But with such availability, it means you have to be good to stand out. And break_fold’s output showcases Hann’s ear for atmosphere, for range, for texture and form.

‘Welwala’ is one of the album’s standouts, and packs some energy in a track that’s actually danceable, if you’re that way inclined. It’s a solid, meaty groove. Grooves and beats are perhaps the defining feature of This Was Forever, with the murky undercurrents of ‘Did I Say it or Just Think it?’ landing in the space between latter-day Depeche Mode and Ghosts-era Nine Inch Nails. At the lighter end of the scale is the buoyant ‘Mishby’ which bounces along in an overtly synthy-piano way, with the beats backed off a way.

This Was Forever is the kind of album you could pop on while working without getting distracted by it – and sometimes, that’s just the kind of album you need.

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Watch: ‘K-Style Circuit’ by The Royal Arctic Institute

Posted: 27 February 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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From Coma To Catharsis is the second full exploratory mission in the current five-piece incarnation of NYC / NJ-based instrumental ensemble, The Royal Arctic Institute.

At present, The Royal Arctic Institute comprises five musicians who have played extensively with other groups and/or as backing/session musicians: drummer Lyle Hysen (Das Damen, Arthur Lee, The Misguided), guitarists John Leon (Roky Erickson, Summer Wardrobe, Abra Moore) and Lynn Wright (And The Wiremen, Bee And Flower, Shilpa Ray), bassist David Motamed (Das Damen, Two Dollar Guitar, Arthur Lee, Townes Van Zandt), and keyboardist Carl Baggaley (Headbrain, Gramercy Arms).

What are the first things you would feel coming out of a coma? Would it be cathartic, a full release of all your emotions? What would that sound like? From Coma To Catharsis tries to capture that auditory experience replacing the steadfast emotions expressed on From Catnap to Coma with the sounds of dreaming, then awakenings.

All the pieces were created communally, deconstructing then reconstructing material mainly composed by guitarist John Leon with a couple written by other band members. McNew recorded the band in a live setting with no digital magic and minimal overdubs except for pedal steel work by John.

This record also highlights the band’s musical development after a further year of playing together. This includes songwriting contributions by Dave (‘Angleman’s Lament’), and Lynn (‘The Elated World’) as well as more input from Carl. “This is the third record I’ve played on,” explains Baggaley, “and on this one we really broke the songs down to the bones. I was able to bring in new influences like King Crimson-style mellotron and electric piano inspired by the late Billy Preston performances during the recording of the Beatles’ Let It Be album.” Besotted by 2021’s Beatles documentary series stemming from those sessions, Lyle draped his drums in tea-towels ala Ringo for the song ‘Passover Bucket.’

Regarding that same title, John says, “During the COVID lockdown, everyone’s kids were home and parents were scrambling and grasping at straws to entertain them. A Jewish friend of mine decided to celebrate Easter with her children to give them something to do. They were fascinated by the concept of Easter baskets. The following year, instead of Easter baskets, the children were given Passover Buckets to keep them quiet.”

‘K-Style Circuit’ provides a flavour of the album, and you can watch the video here:

Score – COPE

Posted: 4 February 2023 in Albums
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Cruel Nature – 6th January 2023

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s something of a relief to discover that Score’s seventh long player for Cruel Nature isn’t some gentle exercise in self-help and mental health wellbeing, or otherwise the soundtrack to some existential post-pandemic breakdown – because the former are utterly fucking nauseating, and the latter, while I’m all for those primal screams of anguish, which I often find relatable, at least to an extent, variety isn’t only the spice of life but the key to staying within the marginal parameters of sane in an insane world. No, COPE, recorded in six weeks at the end of 2022, which somehow feels like a long time ago now already, takes its title from Julian Cope.

As the blurb explains, ‘the album was directly inspired by the musical descriptions to be found in the autobiographies of Julian Cope: Head On and Repossessed. Using Cope’s impassioned words as instructional starting points for each track, COPE references Mott the Hoople, Patti Smith, CAN, Duane Eddy, The Doors, Suicide, Dr John, Sly & The Family Stone and more.’

Julian Cope of one of those people who I’ve long been somewhat perplexed by, and, truth be told, haven’t spent too much time investigating, either musically or biographically. He has always struck me as having a career less centred around his relatively low-key musical output following a degree of commercial success with The Teardrop Explodes, and more around the fact that he’s Julian Cope. Some may want to set me straight on this, but right now, I don’t need to hear it, and a familiarity with the source material shouldn’t be a prerequisite of my ability to critique the work at hand, which interestingly, in drawing on his biographies, only serves to further indicate that Julian Cope spends more time writing about being Julian Cope than making music I need to hear.

COPE is a document to creativity under intense circumstances. To quote from the accompanying notes, COPE was ‘recorded as it was written, in one or two takes in a tiny garage and drawing on an old quote from the arch-druid himself as a creative manifesto: “It had to be very cheap, very fast, very loose. I needed to be an ambassador of looseness”’… ‘COPE is an exercise in embracing limitations and existing in the moment, a lyric-less love letter to Rock ‘n’ Roll itself, and a one-word command to the fried modern human.’

Containing nine instrumental compositions, COPE is a pretty demented journey, an absolute rollercoaster of a ride, that swings between psychedelia and krautrock, twangy desert rock, swampy jazz, with the six-minute ‘Brick’ bringing it all together with a Doorsy kind of trip with the added bonus of some woozy brass in the mix. ‘On The One’ goes deep into a funk workout that grooves hard, but ‘Old Prick’ stands out for its darker post-punk feel that suggests it could almost be a Psychedelic Furs or The Sisters of Mercy demo. The twelve-and-a-half-minute ‘Softgraundt’ is more than just expansive in terms of duration, and is a multi-faceted musical exploration that wanders hither and thither, shifting, evolving, a dozen or more songs in one. And perhaps this is the key to COPE – both the album, and the man. It’s everything all at once, and it’s more than you can really keep up with. It’s a challenge, and one I’m not entirely sure I’m up to, but there’s never a dull or predictable moment here.

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Lunt – Remember We Were Waiting For The Snow

Posted: 12 December 2022 in Albums
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Cruel Nature Records – 2nd December 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Many of us were waiting for the snow. And then, it arrived. And then everything ground to a halt. Welcome to the world now. What happened? It wasn’t always this way.

It’s all in a single word: ‘remember’ immediately imbues the album’s title with a sense of nostalgia. It isn’t explicit, of course, but it’s so, so evocative. Because, so caught up in life and the way everything blurs as time races past, we forget so much. The things we remember, then, hold a special place in our crowded minds. Reminiscences between friends, where moments, events, occurrences, people and places are conjured in those moments of reflection whereby we ‘remember when…’

Winters now are simply not the same as they were. I remember, in the early 80s, a full foot of snow on my parents’ back lawn, from which I would build a six-foot snowman and an igloo. We’d even build igloos on the school field during breaks. Snow didn’t stop school busses from running then. Perhaps it’s because of climate change, perhaps it’s because of the sheer volume of films, art, and literature, that depict idyllic, snowy winters, that show is so evocative. Most of can only dream of a white Christmas, but then, even Irving Berlin’s 1942 song was in itself a slice off nostalgia: ‘just like the ones we used to know’ is perhaps more accurately summarised as ‘just like the ones we see in fiction dating back to Dickens’ but obviously, it doesn’t have the same chime. Ultimately, the world is changing, and

The text which accompanies the album’s release serves almost as an affirmation of my line of contemplation, with the explanation that Remember We Were Waiting For The Snow is about what is called ‘solastalgia’: our anxiety, our concern, our sadness to see some natural phenomenon disappear. Written 5 years ago, after Žils [Deless-Vēliņš – aka (Lunt)] relocated to Latvia, it is a collection of exquisite reflective moving guitar-driven ambience drawing from same the sonic well as soundscapers like Jim O’Rouke’.

The nine tracks of Remember We Were Waiting For The Snow range from the expansive – the eight-minute opener, ‘Flakes and Feathers’ and the nine-minute closer, ‘Auseklis’ – to the fragmentary – the sub-two-minute ‘Dead Man in the Sand’ and ‘Dead Man in the Snow’.

Between the bodies, there is atmosphere. There is tension, but it’s contained by the soft curtains of sound. ‘Plasma (Under the Ice)’ is stark, scraping, brooding, dark, and difficult, uncomfortable, uneasy on the ear.

The instrumentation is varied, from screeding synths to picked guitar and mellow woodwind that falls between jazz and post-rock. But genres matter not and dissolve in the face of such magnificence. Remember We Were Waiting For The Snow drags hard on melancholic reflections. It’s also melodic and intimate, and ultimately, quite magical.

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Kaan Bulak – Illusions

Posted: 22 November 2022 in Albums
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Feral Note – 2nd December 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

I don’t think – or don’t like to think – that it’s an age thing when I say that at some point recently I started to feel not only a separation from certain aspects of mainstream culture, but a seismic wrench away from vast swathes of so-called culture.

Clearly, I don’t fit the stereotype of my peers who decide on turning 35 that there’s been no decent new music since they were 19 or thereabouts, and immediately perpetuate the generation gap musical position that kids today only listen to shit manufactured crap, even if it is largely true.

But more than anything, I simply cannot grasp the concept of the NFT. I mean, what the actual fuck? Cryptocurrencies are insane and seemingly purely for the ultra-rich, but I kinda get them. But paying for a thumbnail GIF? That’s beyond me.

Kaan Bulak’s Illusions has my head swimming, in that it offers not only a multidimensional sonic streaming experience and a length bibliography, but also comes exclusively as a download and offers an art print, and I find myself wondering ‘How’, ‘Why’? The first why is ‘why did it get so bad?’ Like, how is it that artists hawk this shit? As if signed drum heads and the like weren’t exploitative enough (and believe me, they are, and then some). Stepping back from my knee-jerk spasm, I realise I should perhaps give some benefit of the doubt. After all, artists outside of the mainstream have always been compelled to innovate and to find novel ways of not only reaching an audience, but eking an existence that funds their work.

And as the accompanying text reveals, Illusions has been an arduous labour of love:

‘The album had been in the making since 2013, and its creative journey started back then with the track ‘Falling in a Dream’: it was created with violinist Contrapunct playing the melody, when Kaan Bulak had his studio in a techno club above the dance floor, and the thought came that falling asleep must lead to a noisy dream state. In January 2018 Kaan Bulak recorded a prepared grand piano, improvised and locked himself in until numerous sketches were finished. In 2018-2020 he worked on-off on the tracks, including additional recordings on Wurlitzer, oud, frame drums, and electric guitar, and then actually completed them in the summer of 2020. As visible in the quotes in the appendix, it is about a journey into the self through the help of art and philosophy. Zen kōans create an awareness of the illusions and contradictions in everyday life, art makes them tangible.’

Illusions, then, is the product of an immense journey, and ‘Falling in a Dream’ is in fact the last of the fourteen compositions presented here, in a set that’s a shade jazzy, smooth yet angular and unpredictable, with fast-fingered piano and an understated melding of funk and motoric grooves with a dose of hypnotic Doorsy keyboard drone, not to mention minimal techno and spartan disco. There’s a certain slickness to it, too, which gives the album a kind of polish that may attract radio play.

It’s hardly an obvious radio choice, but it’s an album that clearly warrants some playlisting, by virtue of it being, well, a bit out-there. But Illusions  is solid, and real, and a nice album.

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Christine Abdelnour & Andy Moor – Unprotected Sleep

Posted: 27 October 2022 in Albums
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Unsounds Records – 1st November 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Andy Moor has been nothing if not prolific over the course of his career, which is now well into its fourth decade, and his collaborations are truly multitudinous. He’s one of those musicians who clearly thrives on this approach to working – as comfortable contributing as steering his own path.

I’ve covered a fair few of his efforts over the last decade and a bit, both here and elsewhere – with my belated introduction in 2011 arriving via his appearance on Anne-James Chaton’s ‘Transfer /2: Princess in a Car’ single release.

Moor’s style is by no means accessible or easy, and is as distant from mainstream as is possible, but it’s highly distinctive, and this is unquestionably a significant part of his appeal, both to listeners and fellow musicians.

For this work, the accompanying notes explain how ‘Christine Abdnelnour and Andy Moor have explored the notion of hypnagogia or ‘unprotected sleep’ to drive their process for this improvised album, delving in their own experience and memories. Unprotected sleep is commonly defined as an altered state of consciousness that occurs beyond the proper or intended time of waking up, not sleeping in your own safe bed, or even sleeping without a blanket. Being slightly out of phase, one is vulnerable, fragile, but the mind is at the same time very fluid, ultra-associative with an extraordinary memory. In their music making Abdelnour (saxophone) and Moor (guitar) explore the possibilities of real and hallucination sounds and ranges that might come with deep dreaming.’

I had never known that this was a term before, but that it exists speaks on multiple levels, and on a personal level. Sleep is one of the most vital of human functions, but also the most neglected. I’m writing this at 11:30 at night after starting work at 6:30 this morning; five hours of sleep disturbed by lengthy anxiety dreams and broken by the occasional nocturnal anxiety attack is standard. I’m by no means alone in my difficult and often antagonistic and troubled relationship with sleep.

On Unprotected Sleep, Christine Abdelnour and Andy Moor soundtrack the traumas of troubled sleep magnificently. Moor’s scratchy guitar is both metronomic and agitatingly atonal, forging an aural representation of the head-nodding fatigue that so often sweeps over while challenged by needling thoughts that prick a way to wakefulness, or otherwise nag at the psyche

The heavy, grating drone of ‘80db is Loud if You’re Snoring’ ret with scraping guitars and squawks and scrapes if feedback before surging amongst the clattering of cans and escalating to a peak that will inevitably collapse. It drones and groans, and ultimately fades out.

On ‘Compartment 5’, the drone reaches an oppressive level, and it’s enriched by a blank, drony thrum. The density grows, as does the intensity, and it reminds me of the hours spent turning over and over, unable to find that right position, unable to get comfortable, and unable to that headspace conducive to settle to rest: instead, everything is an awkward, uncomfortable churn, accompanied by an unsettling sense off impending doom. The ‘Exchanging Oversize Chrome Objects’ brings a head-pounding crashing beat and uncomfortable churn that’s deeply unsettling, and there’s an uneasiness that permeates the album as a whole.

For many, the experience, if not necessarily the specific sounds, will resonate. Unprotected Sleep is a far from relaxing or soothing sonic experience, built on drones and dissonance, lurching atonal wandering guitar parts and inconsistent tempos that butt against low-key but uncomfortable saxophone drones and honks. Enjoyable is not the word, but compelling most certainly is.

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Esmerine – Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More

Posted: 22 September 2022 in Albums
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Constellation – 26th August 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

One’s perception of time changes with its passage. As you get older, it seems different, and passes differently too. In childhood, there’s the sense that summers are long and sunny, school holidays stretch out in front of you like a playing field the size of Wembley Stadium, whereas in adulthood, six weeks is no time, and the summer means it’s nearly time to start considering Christmas. But even in adulthood, while there’s a keen and pressing awareness of the rapid passing of time, it’s easy – and perhaps it’s how we’re psychologically wired – to ignore the overall narrative span while focusing on the rapid cycle of existing in the present. You get caught up in the infinite and swift cycle of the working week, thee routine, you complain about how time flies as New Year becomes Easter becomes Hallowe’en becomes Christmas, even how every birthday marks the passing of another year. But for all the talk of making the most of life and living every day or week like it could be your last, that’s what it is – talk. Because it’s almost impossible to comprehend there being an end, not just of life, but of anything. It’s simply human nature to take things for granted, that the sun will always rise, that you will always be able to buy the same bread and crisps and whatever in the supermarket.

And then they stop making a certain brand of crisps or chocolate and there are mutters of discontent, and then, twenty years later, online forums are oozing nostalgia for these things. These things of no consequence.

Over the course of seven previous album since 2001, Canadian quintet Esmerine, co-founded by percussionist Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and cellist Rebecca Foon (Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Saltland) have, as their bio notes, straddled the boundaries of ‘contemporary classical and late 20th century Minimalism’ and ‘more visceral and lyrical sonic terrain born from post-rock, folk and global.’

Such a broad palette is the perfect base from which to paint scenes of shifting perspectives that explore the theme of the title.

Time stalls during the nine-minute ‘Entropy: Incantation – Radiance – The Wild Sea’ – a piece which transitions through numerous parts and brings a range of atmospheres, from quietly brooding piano solo to soaring, majestic post-rock, trickling into the brass-orientated ‘Entropy: Acquiescence’ which evokes that sepia toned Hovis advert kind of nostalgia. And so it’s here I discover that that isn’t an exclusively English thing, but still – there is a cultural heritage of a nostalgia for a golden age of simplicity and innocence. It is, of course, a fallacy: past times were difficult, flawed. It’s easy to hanker for a rose-tinted rendition of a past you never knew, and ‘Imaginary Pasts’ seems to acknowledge this, wordlessly, via the medium of slow drones and rippling piano.

And so it is that Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More mines a golden post-rock seem of evocativeness, conveyed by means of slow-burning epics, interspersed with fragmentary pieces, which, while under three minutes in duration, give the album a certain sense of pace amidst the spic sprawlers, which culminate in the seven-and-a-half minute ‘Number Stations’. The brooding ‘Wakesleep’ is tense and eerie, with a sense of foreboding, that paves the way for the dolorous funeral chimes that herald the arrival of the closer.

There’s a sadness to it, and it’s this sadness which permeates the album as a whole. It’s a sadness that speaks of lost time and fading pasts. And when they’re gone, they’re gone. And yet there are soft hints of redemption, that nothing is entirely finite. Nothing is forever, but memories linger longer than life.

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Darkroom – Fallout 4

Posted: 20 August 2022 in Albums
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Expert Sleepers – 25th August 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

Fallout 4 is, as the title suggests, the fourth album in Darkroom’s Fallout trilogy.

Darkroom have been going for more than twenty years now, and have built up an extensive catalogue centred around fluid ambient work, which they’re keen to point out ‘stretches the definition of the genre to its limits in many directions: from quiet, introspective and naturalistic through celestial and melodic to intense, abrasive and synthetic.’

In presenting three longform compositions, Fallout 4 affords the collective to fully explore all of these elements.

As the accompanying notes explain, ‘Darkroom’s music has always been played not programmed, with a focus on human interaction and capturing the magic of live performance’, and the first two pieces hark back to the last performance of their 2012 tour. ‘It’s Clear from the Air’ is hypnotic, rippling, mesmerising, low, undulating drones providing a subtle low end to the textured interweaving synths that overlay subtle yet complex rhythms.

It bleeds into the twenty-five minute ‘Qaanaak (Parts 1 & 2)’ and immediately the tone is darker, denser, with a grumbling low and needling pulsations that create tension within the suffocatingly thick, beatless smoggy atmosphere. You find yourself lost, in suspension, somewhat bewildered as the tones twist and change. Electronic flares whip and lash as stuttering beats emerge through the relentlessly nagging pulsations, and continue to shift and mutate to a broiling, bubbling larva as booming bass tones surge and swell. The rhythm grows in urgency, but it’s muffled, constrained, which heightens the experience of a sense of airlessness and entrapment and as much as the throbbing oscillations are indebted to Can and Tangerine Dream, their abrasive edge hints at the uneasy, wheezing synth grind of Suicide.

The third piece, ‘Tuesday’s Ghost’ is perhaps the most conventionally ambient’ of the three, and is certainly the most overtly ‘background’ as is swims and floats and chimes along fuzzy lines of slow decay and loose, vague forms that have no shape, rise and fall. There is a discreet linearity to it, as it gradually, and subtly builds in depth and density, and it’s here that it become clear just how essential that human element is to Darkroom’s work – that sense of musicians bouncing off one another and understanding one another through intuition. There is no substitute for it, and you simply can’t programme the dynamics of form. It’s this intuitive, natural fluidity that breathes life into the compositions, and in turn, it’s this sense of life that the listener connects to and engages with. Fallout 4 may be ambient at heart or by genre… but it’s also far beyond the frontier of ambient.

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Esmerine – Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More

Posted: 6 August 2022 in Albums
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Christopher Nosnibor

Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More is such a quintessentially post-rock album title: without hearing a note, it evokes the spirit of 2003-2006 or thereabouts. On listening, it’s perhaps not as overtly post-rock as all that – it’s not a slow-building crescendo-fest with chiming guitars like Explosions in the Sky or even lesser-known acts like And So I Watch You From Afar, but with ties to legends in the field, it is every inch of that milieu, with ‘the cello of Rebecca Foon (Saltland, Set Fire To Flames, Silver Mt Zion) and the marimba of ex-Godspeed You! Black Emperor percussionist Bruce Cawdron at its core’.

It’s been a full five years since their last album, 2017’s Mechanics of Dominion, and during this time the Montreal-based collective have been doing what, it seems, the Montreal post-rock scene does best – detaching themselves from the world and conjuring magnificent, magical soundscapes that offer a conduit to planes of pure escapism.

Everything Was Forever Until It Was No More presents a rich sonic tapestry that incorporates a broad range of elements. The press released makes mention of ‘emotive chamber works using threads of post-classical, post-rock, Minimalism, neo-Baroque, jazz, pop and a wide array of folk traditions’ as being Esmerine’s palette.

‘Blackout’ opens the album with a soft, elegant piano draped with brooding strings that’s graceful, subtly emotive, and easy on the ear. ‘Entropy: Incantation – Radiance – The Wild Sea’, the first of the two-part ‘Entropy’ suite is a nine-minute journey through atmospheric ambience, where one treads with trepidation, uncertain of what may be hidden in the shadows. There’s an aura of ancient mysticism that echoes before eventually, the track refocuses toward a driving prog rock finale.

The beauty and joy of such a work is that while there are undoubtedly inspirations and emotions poured into the compositions, such wide spaces without words offer the listener a vessel into which to empty their own experiences and interpretations, and as such, a piece like the seven-minute ‘Imaginary Pasts’ with its lilting piano, roiling drums, and textured guitar work which trips out into hazy space offers so much scope for the listener to invest and reflect upon their own imaginary pasts. Such invitations to meditate on life and to journey into inner space are extremely welcome when life is so relentless.

Despite the title seemingly alluding to a sense of nostalgia, Everything Was Forever feels more like a work that creates its own space in time, rather than reflecting on a time past. Three of the four final tracks are under three minutes each in length, and as such, are almost dream-like fragments, and the listener finds themselves wandering through chiming bells and rippling notes that dapple like sunlight through trees in a breeze on ‘Wakesleep’, before ‘Number Stations’ guides the way not towards the light, but through a murky sonic swamp or eerie echoes before taking its final magnificent form, and reminds us that, ultimately, nothing is forever, and everything is just a fleeting moment in the scheme of eternity.

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