Sleepmakeswaves - In Today Already Walks Tomorrow (2008)

Sleepmakeswaves are a little known instrumental post-rock band from Sydney, Australia. Like most post-rock bands, they combine slow melodies with crescendos and intense climaxes. But their variation comes from use of multi-instruments and hints of genre-bending, from powerful metal-like drum sequences to ambient electronic bridges. Their debut album In Today Already Walks Tomorrow displays the band's range of style and sound.

Opening track 'I Will Write Peace On Your Wings and You Will Fly Over the World' Starts off unusually for a post-rock song, as it begins with a climax-like intensity, then simmering down only to build right back up again. The instrumentals here are top-notch, creating a range of intensities that make the song exciting. 'One Day You Will Teach Me to Let Go of My Fears' climaxes in the middle, combining a nice build-up with a smooth, easing tempo into a quiet finish. 'It's dark, It's cold, It's winter' is just really nice, simple ambient music.

In Today Already Walks Tomorrow is a great post-rock album and I highly recommend it to any fan of the genre. Also check out their self-titled EP, they're both free.

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aronrayzz. - карман для слёз (2010)

Among the lists, we've seem to forgotten to post album reviews, so I'll plan to supplement these lists with some relatively unknown 2010 albums, as well as some general favorites I've been meaning to post. So to start, an obscure trio post-rock band from Mother Russia.

And I can sense the grimaces from the mention of "post-rock", a genre so packed with artists I'm sure most of us prepared to hear nothing but mediocrity and cliches. Perhaps they do fall for some of the traps of the genre. For the 45+ minutes this album lasts, you'll hear plenty of remnants of all the classics that appear in the majority of these bands, but it's not strictly that. They have certain moments of deviation. Like within the fifth track, the guitar compositions become more riff-centric, falling into thick distortion and the drums come from the background to punch in furious blasts with quick snare rolls to break it up, even to the supplement of screams. And it's really in these moments where they gain strength. As strong as their more ambient moments are, it's highlighted from the contrast of intensity. It happens a bit too infrequently for my tastes, especially for a band I've heard described as "screamo", but when it's there, it hits.

buy... idk where.

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Sailors With Wax Wings - Sailors With Wax Wings (2010)

Sailors With Wax Wings is a newly formed supergroup consisting of:

R. Loren (Pyramids)- vocals / textures
J. Leah - vocals
Ted Parsons (Swans, Jesu, Godflesh) - drums
Simon Scott (Slowdive) - electronics
Aidan Baker (Nadja) - guitar
Colin Marston (Krallice, Behold... the Arctopus) - guitar
Vern Rumsey (Unwound) - bass
Prurient (Dominick Fernow of Hospital Productions, Cold Cave, etc) - noise / electronics
James Blackshaw (Young God Records solo artist, Current 93) - piano
Hildur Gudnadottir (Touch Records) - cello
Aaron Stainthorpe (My Dying Bride) - vocals
Jonas Renkse (Katatonia) - vocals
Marissa Nadler (Kemado Records solo artist, appears on Xasthur's latest record) - vocals
David Tibet (Current 93) - cover art
Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer) - design, layout, painting, collage

Sailors With Wax Wings may appear to be a collection of the talents and ideas of various musicians, but those ideas weren’t just thrown into a blender. R. Loren meticulously crafted the album to ensure that no note was missing and no note was wasted. The album is a complete, cohesive experience, one that envelops the listener and rocks him to sleep with alien lullabies. Sailors With Wax Wings is a prime example of R. Loren doing what he does best: acquiring the means to realize an idea and using them to their full potential.

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Tera Melos - Tera Melos (2005)

I really can't put my thoughts about this CD into words. I love experimental music and I love this CD but I honestly don't know what to say to convince you that it's a good album, and I've spent a few days trying to think of something to say about it. Each song is great, except for Melody 8 which is 30 minutes of pure noise so it's pretty much a novelty track but 1-7 are quality math rock songs, and definitely worth a listen or 2.

Last.fm | Buy | Try

Helios - Full lengths

Three months. That’s how long I’ve been dreaming. Sometimes, when you dream, you jolt awake. You’ve been falling. Sometimes you wake up, sometime in the early morning, and you can’t feel your arms. You slept on them. Sometimes you wake up, and you’ve no sense of place. No recollection of location. You’ve lost it. Times when sunlight is xenophobic, the paleness of its grimace seems alien, foreign, like a hypochondriac at rest. When the fleeting glance of a beautiful girl is as devouring and inexplicable as the rising shore – casted eyes, deep rhythms, a sense of weightlessness. A timeless ambiance, an escape, transference. The melodious, harmonic crashing of Helios.

Sometimes you wake up. You’re not sure why, but you do. You recognize it. Sometimes you pull off at the wrong exit. Sometimes, you write your lovers name down as your own, their name on the front of your mind. Sometimes, when thinking of her, I respond with “two please”, even when I’m alone. It doesn’t matter. I’m lost, placeless, evading my permeating reality. Escaping the weight of my own. This is the sound of Helios; an escape without a means, a constant reminder of her, of my own longing, of a love that pervades in me with every ounce of being.

Eingya is Helios’ sophomore album, but I’d like to start with this one. Perhaps his most respected, revered, and highly rated album, even. On the surface, this is one of those perfect elevator pieces, with its meandering acoustical melodies and soft, twinkly ambient overtones. Bird chirping samples would even suggest its own self-parodied pretention, what’s more obvious in a blissed-out ambient piece than birds? It’s precise in its execution, stringent, even static, in its deployment and structure. His flow is transparent when juxtaposed to other works in the genre, his melodies without excitation, exact in their prose and repetitious in their emotional lull. But Helios is not an exacting claim, nor an exclamation point, nor an impression on time, but rather a reflection of timelessness. What Helios does is provide the softness and methodical beauty of transient soundscapes – a divide, a soft lull, an incomprehensible tug towards something so very distant, so very trivial, delicately entwined in the rifts of time. For Years And Years and Bless This Morning Year are perhaps two of the most perfect ambient pieces composed on this album. Slow, nostalgic, deep churning melodies that drone on, but unlike Helios’ cousins in the ambient genre ( Nadja, for example ) they sputter in for only a fraction of a moment. These songs do not need to reach outwards towards the +20 minute mark. Their intent is not to immerse the listener in the textual reverb and flow of the sounds, but rather provide a foundation of nostalgia, of memory. To wander around an open-house. And like a good painting, like a perfect kiss, like the hum of your loves afterglow, stamps itself in everlasting memory.

Caesura is the third album released by Keith Kenniff under the Helios moniker. If anything, this is an extension of what Eingya is. His usage of kicks and electronic rhythms is more predominant, but his methodology is still moving in the same direction. Twinkly melodies, low drum notes, some kicks to path a track. It feels more like a composite piece than a dwindling rumination a la Eingya. Ideas are more obvious and figurehead the albums themes; elevator music for transnational elevators. Sounds and harmonies that complement sunsets over distant canopies; the nirvana of a touch, a soft gesture. A smile. His experimentation is incredibly welcomed and increases the replayability of the album, and, if anything, results in the greatest track on the album: A Mountain of Ice. A slow, harmonious build into a beautiful fragment of clean, plodding kicks with the slight whisper of melody. It heeds the call of his prior album; romanticizing with memory.

I don’t have much to say about Unomia, but I recommend giving it a listen after the aforementioned two. It’s good, but underdeveloped. His maturity in both composition and execution is young, and it lacks the finely tuned polish of his follow ups. As expected. It is still however an important album in Helios' growth as a sound, and nevertheless has some absolutely beautiful moments.

I want to express, once again, how fulfilling these albums are when taken as such. Music for warm summer nights when your friends are out and the house is empty and the sun is sinking just below the horizon. The phone might ring, but you won’t answer. Birds chirp outside a window somewhere, probably in a tree. Being birds. The swooshing pass of a car. The scream of children at play, chasing one another in the streets, dancing in and out of nightlight shadows. The distant kick of a pop can. A knock on the door that you don’t answer. But it’s okay. Because you’ve already forgotten all about that.

Unomia ( FLAC/Not my rip )
Eingya ( 320 )
Caesura ( 320 )

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Natural Snow Buildings - The Dance of the Moon and the Sun (2006)

The sole idea of listening to 160 minutes of music by any one band can seem like a daunting task. There aren't too many artists out there that I'd want to listen to for 2.5 hours in one continuous sitting. With that much music, you'd expect there to be a decent amount of filler material, but not so in this case. There are 25 tracks, with 4 of them topping 10 minutes long and only 2 are less than 2 minutes. However, this longevity of the songs is well-suited for the drone-heavy post-rock-folk they make. The band is consistent of two French men, one on guitar another on cello. They can be folky, more often ghastly, but there's never a doubt that they're talented.

Opening track "Carved Heart" sets the mood of what's to come over long journey ahead. Electronic whirs and wheezes then fill the room with "Cut Joint Sinews and Divine Reincarnation," making way for the trance inducing raga that lays ahead. Hand drums and finger cymbals are used to great effect, while the ominous drone in the background becomes louder and more threatening. It's definitely the most intense track on the album, and at 15 minutes long, by the end of it you can't help but feel a little scared. This is not the last of the rage-esque tracks on the album, but none of them are as fervent as this initial example. This release may

be hard to find, but if you like having your ears caressed and soothed for hours on end, seek this out at all costs.

If someone is looking to buy this album I can't find anything really. As far as i can tell, The Dance of the Moon and the Sun is out of print, and was supremely limited to begin with...

Download:

Disc 1 Moon

Disc 2 Sun

Envy - Recitation (2010)

I'd guess that nearly every blog that would be interested in this has it up, but even if I'm late, it's better than not having it at all. Japanese screamo legends Envy release perhaps their best effort to date with Recitiation, again mixing their devastating "doom screamo" with lighter, "post-rock" passages including, what I'm sure are nicely worded, soft-spoken passages, but non-Japanese speakers will have to rely solely on the tone to gain enjoyment.

I suppose we can start with the cover. Seemingly a reflection on the music itself. Sparse yet impactful, dark and bright, the music itself paints the landscape that appears. The upper raises the heavy abrasive music as we fall back to and settle with the lighter songs, maybe some confusion between the two interjecting sparsely.

I'll refrain from going track to track or even a slight play-by-play. For one, the album is far too long for that. Over an hour of this and that doesn't lend itself to a through dissection, especially with one listen. Mostly I'll say that this is certainly recommended for anyone that was a fan of the Heaven in Her Arms album I posted towards the beginning of this blog. Also, even though the two genres mentioned come with a fair amount of stigma, please leave your silly predispositions at the door. While they carry a significant amount of themes from each, Envy comes together as an excitingly different beast, transcending those labels. It's not necessarily screamo, and it's not necessarily post-rock, it's just damn good music.

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Swans-My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky (2010)

After a 13 year absence Michael Gira has once again started up his project known as Swans. In the past they have released some of the most unique music out there and some of my personal favorite albums.

This album is defiantly a good start for them especially after having such a long absence in the music scene. While this album is not as great as some of their former work such as The Great Annihilator, White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity, and Body To Body Job To Job. It's still stands up to be one of my favorite albums released so far this year and hopefully is a preview of more to come from this band.

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Heaven in Her Arms - Paraselene (2010)

Japanese screamo band, Heaven in Her Arms, continues their progression into a devastating mix of screamo, post-rock, and a number of other apparent influences ranging from modern chamber music to doom and black metal, with their latest release, Paraselene. Even though, since their inception, they've had these same depressive themes, screams, and extended melodies, they fully realize their potential for emotional expression with some of the most dense atmospheres of any album in recent memory. Crushing, doom-inspired guitars set over some impressive drum work flow seamlessly into their namesake's (named after a song on Converge's album Jane Doe) influence of hardcore riffs with variated melodies and, again, some incredibly impressive drumming. All-in-all, even after a couple albums that were so obviously leading up to something like this, I'm still shocked. Those doomy melodies, set with repetive melodies within and above, sliding into the band's "post-hardcore" sound seems like a near-culmination for what the band has been accomplishing for so long.

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