Sólstafir - Masterpiece of Bitterness

Genre(s) - (Post-)black metal
Origin - Iceland
Year of release - 2005
Bitrate - 128 kbps
Size - 62.78 MB

Iceland! There are many more black metal bands from there than its quickly dwindling number of inhabitants would warrant, but only a handful seem to be actually worth the effort of tracking them down. Sólstafir are one from the latter category, a progressive black metal band with a lot of influences from hardcore, sludge and post-rock. They come across as quite intellectual to me, yet not by far as elitist as most regular bands in the genre. Masterpiece of Bitterness strangely starts off with the main course, an oddly-titled twenty-minute long opus that almost (almost!) makes the rest of the album obsolete. It showcases some dazzlingly expansive atmospheres, made possible in large part by some seriously gnarly, indignantly groaning bass work offsetting the resounding glimmer of the guitars. It's a song, a real bitter masterpiece, in which you can really lose yourself for its entire duration and you may not even need drugs for it - though of course I generally recommend drug use to everybody.

1. I myself the visionary head
2. Nature strutter
3. Bloodsoaked velvet
4. Lux fare
5. Ghosts of light
6. Ritual of fire
7. Náttfari
   

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Bedhead - Transaction de novo

Genre(s) - Slowcore/post-rock
Origin - Texas, USA
Year of release - 1998
Bitrate - 128 kbps
Size - 33.84 MB

The aptly titled band Bedhead were an indie rock band who created calm, drowsy, squeaky-clean music with three guitars and a bass, which sounds like it should be listened to after a long hot shower and just before laying down your tired body on the hard, stained but warmly inviting mattress. Throughout their career, their music took on more and more body, some degree of distortion, and intra-track progress and these slowcore-pioneers floated into post-rock territory at a more than leisurely pace. Even with Transaction de Novo, their final album, they still exhibit a rare and deliberate holding back, never falling for useless pomp. It makes Bedhead an excellent band to spend those warm last waking moments of your day on.

1. Exhume
2. More than ever
3. Parade
4. Half-thought
5. Extramundane
6. Forgetting
7. Lepidoptera
8. Psychosomatica
9. The present
   

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A Beautiful Machine - Solar Winds, White Noise, Antigravity

Genre(s) - Post-spacegaze
Origin - Australia
Year of release - 2000
Bitrate - Various
Size - 70.45 MB

An early, and unfortunately still inexplicably unknown post-rock band, whose music is considered to be built up from space rock and shoegaze elements. The latter are a lot more obvious, I think. The space rock aspect can be most clearly noted in the worked-open structures and spaciousness and universal (non-personal) overtones, but then those feautures are applicable to most regular post-rock bands as well. But common sense tells us not to give a crap about genres, so just give it a listen if you like expansive, mind-bending soundscapes that glow with all the colours of a stellar nebula. A Beautiful Machine will be happy to show you around.

All material by this band can be downloaded officially for free from archive.org, here.

1. Entwine
2. Shining
3. Sometimes
4. Glow
5. The sound of her wings
6. Follow mine
7. Breathe in space
8. Coming up...
9. ...Again
   

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God is an Astronaut - God is an Astronaut

Genre(s) - Post-rock
Origin - Glen of the Downs, Ireland
Year of release - 2008
Bitrate - 160-320 kbps
Size - 91.01 MB

Just saw these scruffy blokes live in hideous Tilburg and it was quite the experience. I bought the previously posted EP, A Moment of Stillness, and decided that was kind enough a gesture to allow me to make some more of their stuff available. You ought to exploit that opportunity as God is an Astronaut is simply the best the young post-rock genre has to offer. Things only step up from there if you consider that this self-titled (yet third) full-length is made up of the most wonderful material the band's come up with so far. It's music you could share your burdens with but - watch out - it will also shift some its own burdens back onto your own weak shoulders. Soothing, yes, but sadly so. This is for the people like myself, who supplant and eclipse their own darkest hours by a more abstract sense of great and all-encompassing tragedy. You know who you are, I guess, or don't I. You?

1. Shadows
2. Post mortem
3. Echoes
4. Snowfall
5. First day of sun
6. No return
7. Zodiac
8. Remaining light
9. Shores of Orion
10. Loss
    

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Errata - Errata EP

Genre(s) - Screamo/post-rock
Origin - Lisbon, Portugal
Year of release - 2009
Bitrate - 192 kbps
Size - 33.81 MB

Oooh, I feel so acknowledged. A band came to my blog to ask me if I could maybe upload their EP! Well, maybe, I said, if it meets my standards. And it does! The raw power contained in Errata's five tracks can not hide the intricacy of the sometimes meandering, other times savage melodies, and the amount of detail is astounding. Of course, for a post-screamo band atmosphere and emotion are what really count, and those aspects are proudly flown during the ebbs and the flows of the music. The dual guitars are instrumental in this, creating oxygen-poor mountaintop soundscapes (lilting, then spasming) that never last as long as you want them. The vocalist wrings a nice raw hoarseness from his throat but sometimes alternates with a cleaner, even more miserable voice that reminds me of early Appleseed Cast. It's a band these Portuguese, even though they're more extreme, could be roughly compared to if you'd listen through your earlashes. Errata play intense and pained music that's all the more impressive if you consider this is just a first EP. I hope these guys make it far.

1. Permanecer
2. Estética sentimental
3. Tempestade em segundos
4. (In)extência
5. Honesty is hard as myths
   

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Les Discrets - Les Discrets

Band/artist - Les Discrets
Genre(s) - Post-rock, shoegaze
Origin - France
Album - Les Discrets EP
Year of release - Pas du tout!

"At this time, no release from Les Discrets has been released. A so-called EP seems to have been released in 2007, but the musician himself even doesn't know it! This "EP" you can download on web blogs, portals, p2p clients is a fake, a poor rip of Myspace draft songs that were at time on that page.
The so-called cover is actually a shot from my animated short film that i used as Myspace main picture. Nothing to do with a cover!!
The first release of Les Discrets will be an album that will be recorded from the 1st to 19th June in Drudenhaus Studio in France, and it will be released via Prophecy Productions in Autumn 2009."
- Fursy Teyssier

[This is a repost. As recent, thorough investigation points out (it was on the project's Myspace page), this is not actually an EP but a collection of tracks downloadable from Myspace, making this a very unofficial "release". I personally was just too glad to find this on Soulseek, and subsequently too eager to hear and share this with you to be critical. To be honest, it was me who took the then-official Les Discrets myspace image as a replacing album cover, and since I was the first to publish the non-EP, it kind of got spread around the instawebs as an official cover. I'm not going to take down the post at this news - I hope it will lead a lot of people to consider buying the album when it comes. There's reason to hope so; at the moment, this is the single most often downloaded file in the history of this blog.]

Les Discrets is the platform from which the multi-talented Fursy Teyssier whom you may also know from his contributions to Alcest and Amesoeurs, releases his music, art and animations. The musical side of this project so far consists of just this EP but I've heard a full-length is in the making. Alcest definitely shines through in the music's mood, but this is more minimalist in the softer parts, whereas the louder parts are more typically post-rock in their building up and releasing of audial tension. In fact, Les Discrets is very similar to The American Dollar, not a coincidence because Fursy has cooperated with said band on a number of levels. In all it's quite a beautiful EP, though mostly on the force of the first two tracks. The last three are a bit understated, and I have the feeling Fursy can do even better than this. I consider this a most pleasant appetizer for the coming main course.

You should also check his site where you can watch his wonderful animated short called Tir Nan Og (where have we heard that title before?), an allegory on dying with music from The American Dollar.

1. Corbeaux automne ciel gris
2. Les vieux ne meurent pas
3. Pensées sous les nuages
4. Song for mountains
5. Urban disease (unfinished)
   

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Followed by Ghosts - The Entire City Was Silent

Genre(s) - Post-rock
Origin - United States of America
Year of release - 2007
Bitrate - around 224 kbps
Size - 67.63 MB

Even with the best of post-rock albums, it seems like if you describe one you describe them all. So when I'm saying this band is up there with God is an Astronaut and The American Dollar (yes, my very favourites), and have little intelligent to add to that, please do not let that discourage you. Something that might be said is that, like previously mentioned groups, this is some highly melancholic stuff, and while Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor may be super mega epic and all that, they are relatively emotionless. The Entire City Was Silent is post-rock by the book, but it makes you feel, and that's something I miss in the bulk of their colleagues.

1. Hymn of twilight
2. A mirthful experience
3. Clear blue sky
4. Manifest destiny
5. City of noise
6. A new dawn
7. The entire city was silent
   

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God is an Astronaut - A Moment of Stillness

Genre(s) - Post-rock
Origin - Glen of the Downs, Ireland
Year of release - 2006
Bitrate - around 192 kbps
Size - 30.66 MB

Instrumental rock songs that steadily build from calm pieces of near-ambient introspection to stormy crescendoes that Explode in the Sky - God is an Astronaut are not much different from any of their post-rock colleagues except for the fact that they go much, much deeper. There is such melancholy in here, so much longing, so much tragic beauty. Each pained, crystalline guitar tone is a page, each track on this EP a chapter from a book you just know can't end with the main characters alive. It tells of doomed, clandestine loves and women frozen to death at the seashore after waiting in vain for their lovers to return. Well, it may tell you something else entirely, but if you want to be genuinely moved, please look no further.

1. Frozen twilight
2. A moment of stillness
3. Forever lost (reprise)
4. Elysian fields
5. Crystal canyon
   

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Voyager - Voyager

Band/artist - Voyager
Genre(s) - Doom metal, post-rock
Origin - United States of America
Album - Voyager
Year of release - 2008

Debut EP (just over half an hour) of a promising new doom metal band that blends post-rock arrangements with the urgent intensity of sludge, and the melancholy, and some of the riffs, of doom-death metal. Sludge has never been able to catch my attention but by tactfully describing this as post-deathdoom, they got me to try it out anyway. It's really good; especially for being the band's first attempt. The combination between doom and post-rock works well, perhaps better even than Caïna's attempt to try the trick on black metal. It adds tension as the riffs seem to somehow vibrate, allowing for a spectacular discharge according to post-rock tradition. You may wanna keep an eye on this band if you're into this kind of music, they seem to know what they're doing better than I know how to describe it.

1. Crushing winds
2. Static pulse
3. Drifter
4. Avulsion
5. Surfacing
   

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Caïna - Temporary Antennae

Band/artist - Caïna
Genre(s) - Post-black metal
Origin - United Kingdom
Album - Temporary Antennae
Year of release - 2008

Another runner-up to my Best of 2008; and like the leader of that list, another project flying the flag for inventive British black metal. Caïna was founded as a one-man raw but complex BM band but gradually turned more experimental, with especially post-rock influences seeping into the music. I've tried to describe the resulting soundscapes for hours, but it wouldn't work. Let's just say the music is at times sprawling like a hillside river, at times suffocating like a dungeon wall, and at times both. Temporary Antennae oozes avant-gardism in every direction, which I guess keeps the songs distinguishable, but also makes the album more exhausting that it should have to be, and it may overstay its welcome. That's why it fell short of the chart - also I think I liked 2007's Mourner better. But hey, it's black metal meets post rock, how can it not be awesome??

1. Manuscript found in unmarked grave, 1919
2. Ten went up river
3. Willows and whippoorwills
4. Tobacco beetle
5. Larval door
6. ...and ivy wound round him
7. Them golds and brass
8. Petals and bloodbowls
9. Temporary antennae
10. None shall die
    

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The American Dollar - The Technicolour Sleep

Band/artist - The American Dollar
Genre(s) - Post-rock
Origin - United States of the American dollar
Album - The Technicolour Sleep
Year of release - 2007

Half a year ago I wouldn't have dreamed to upload a post-rock album even if my life depended on it. This was due to a silly and unfounded grudge against the entire genre. But then I discovered Les Discrets, and the use of The Long March in the video Tir Nan Og is what opened my eyes to The American Dollar. Now I've been discovering some awesome post-rock bands, but this one remains undefeated. In principle TAD is a very stereotypical example of its style's characteristics: instrumental, atmospheric music based on rock instruments, but with very resonant, sprawling tones and song structures that work up to a climax. But none of the other bands I've tried, including Mogwai and Caspian, have such emotionally charged songs. The track Signalling Through the Flames is simply the most beautiful instrumental track that I have ever heard and everybody should have heard it at least once before (s)he dies.

1. Rudiments of a spiritual life
2. The technicolour sleep
3. Signalling through the flames
4. Tonight, let's all make love in Vegas
5. Daytrip
6. The swamp
7. Supernova landslide
8. Time
9. Summer of war
10. DEA
11. Raided by waves
12. Palestine
    

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