16 October has to be some kind of saint patron of post-rock's day as on this date, several great names within the genre released their new albums. But even though some of them were REALLY great names (like Caspian or Ranges), the album that really caught my attention came from the Italian outfit Threestepstotheocean and it's no surprise as it's just a continuation of their fantastic and well-leveled discography.
It's already 6 years since Del fuoco was released (the one with Dispersi, one of my favourite post-rock tracks ever) so I was curious if the band can keep up the level of intricacy and emotional content on their new album. And I was not disappointed, not in the slightest. This is the kind of post-rock that may not impress with the level of noise the audience is receiving but that's not the point: the point is to create artful compositions woven out of various elements to become a coherent piece. Sometimes i sounds like guitar-heavy post-rock, sometimes it's closer to electronica and trip-hope vibes. I like all the ways the band employs not to stand still. And it's not only the feature of their sound, in fact, the band dedicates the entire album to the idea that "much of what we consider stable or permanent is bound to shift, dissolve, or disappear". Movement and change.
And yes, the intriguing sound also means interesting collaborations like the one with a Sardinian vocalist Dalila Kayros on the very trip-hoppy and folky Black Syrup or with the Italian band Moonilt in the dense and meaty Every Time I Dive. Not the one with Conny Ochs, but everything else is really, really good.
Is my favourite new dreamy indie rock band coming from Sweden? Very possible. Kallsup made my list of favourite things already with their debut album last year, but they didn't want us to wait long for another treat and went ahead and released the sophomore Alldeles för nära already 1.5 year later. And the moody hits they create certainly deliver.
The slightly hidden and dispersed vocals with the dense guitar music (there are 6 people in the band and you can hear it) hit you like a tank. The band creates music that is both loud and extremely melodic, the way they write hit songs like Kino or Undantagshelgen tells you something about how talented they are. But the thing is that the album does not only contain the melodic bangers, but also some tracks the purpose of which is to create the oneiric and slightly melancholic atmosphere with psychedelic compositions like, especially, the one in Min största vän.
I could point to several songs worth checking out (Imma, Fritt fall, but I'm gonna be a banger sucker this time and tell you to go and listen to the radio hit and a single track Kino (... and it's so interesting that this is the second Swedish band with a song called Kino after Star of Heaven who started as a Kino (pop-rock band from the east) cover band as it was revealed in my interview with the Swedes).
Archie Ingram makes his music as Stone Anthem and he certainly knows how to blend genres together to achieve a melancholic and beautiful mix. The ambient and slowcore and dream pop and singer/songwriter, everything has its place on the 9th (already!) album by the Coventry-based artist.
"My work kind of lives somewhere between a glitch and memory fragments of detuned voices field recordings processed until they feel fictional rhythms that almost repeat but never quite land the same way twice..." the artist describes his music before adding something that really got to me: "Imagine music that feels like it’s remembering itself incorrectly." Yes, that's it: not only does the sentence encapsulate the dreamy atmosphere of the ambient pop on the album, but also how it was created with the repetetitions and loops. The intimate, lo-fi atmosphere adds to this unreal, oneiric vibe.
By the way, while describing the artist, the label states that Ingram started the project in 2019 when he was... 12 years old. That can't be right, right? RIGHT?!
Project that creates "post-industrial, ambient, noise" music that goes so far that it basically becomes post-rock played in weird way. But it sounds SO GOOD! The French duo looks like experimental electronic musicians on the stage but they sound like dunk!festival regulars and they just released their debut album with some interestingly psychedelic cover.
Those psychedelic and space-focused themes seem to be the main drive of the two artists known as Astrocyte Jfi and Sid negativv. The motives here are interestingly described as the love of "antiquity-retrofuturism, space-time labyrinths". The sci-fi cinematic works (most notable Dune) that marry the future with the concept of the evolution of civilization(s) seem to prevail, but the sound of music is not entirely what I'd describe as the space post-rock (like the one from Beyond the Event Horizon). The psychedelic guitar post-rock is what I'd describe them, although... I don't think they even use guitars. Instead, the drums are accompanied by "Korg MS 2O instrumentation, the Osmose next-generation instrument" which I have to quote from their biography as I have no idea about any technicalities regarding synthesizers. But I guess it's important.
What is important to me, though, is the ease with which the duo creates the soundscapes that feel both cinematically vast and brutally powerful without compromising the melodic side of their compositions. It's the kind of music that isn't million miles away either from sci-fi soundtracks (I'm thinking The Invincible video game for example) or psychedelic, desert-like heavy instrumental music. Really, the best of two worlds (or planets if you will).
My blog became the official media partner of the 5NDREAS Festival and my task is to fill in the remaining 4 weeks of wait with something interesting. And what could be more interesting than reading about the bands that are about to play on the stage at Feierwerk Kranhalle in Munich? Yeah? It's time for the 3rd one today.
It's not enough to say that they mix post-rock with (neo)classical music, they literally make the former as if it was the latter. Star of Heaven finally released their third album this year and Kyrie is more than inspired by Mozart's works. Not only that, their compositions are so beautiful, so striking, that they should be played in concert halls. It's our luck that we'll hear them on a post-rock festival.
I talked with Anna, Tove and Rasmus, 3/5 of the lineup. And although some of the Scandinavian reserved nature was clearly noticeable, we had a great conversation in the end. Thank you, guys!
ŁŚ: When I listen to your sound, I feel like it comes from two different worlds, from the world of neoclassical music and from the world of post-rock music. Do you think that there is a connection between those two?
Anna Löfstrand: There is a connection. When I was young, I listened to classical music a lot. Then I started to listen to post-rock and after a while, I was like, “Oh! It's not such a big difference!”. They're similarly atmospheric and dynamic. I really like to listen for the post-rock elements in classical music, if you know what I mean.
Rasmus Grip: I totally agree and I wish that we could learn more from classical music as one of the things I find boring with most music is that it repeats itself all the time. And the classical one doesn't really do that in the same way. From what I understand of its principles, it's mostly about variations of the same theme, playing it in a different way, sometimes stronger, sometimes faster, changing the tonality and so on. It’s also repetitions, but slightly different.
Tove Rhodiner: Both give more freedom as well. You can make a song go for 20 minutes or 3 minutes as well, while regular pop music is always around 4 minutes. We also do that thing that you said, Rasmus, that we have a theme, but we kind of reuse it in various places and with various approaches. That makes it more interesting because every time time you hear it, you think of it in a new way.
ŁŚ: Would you say that you are more like neoclassical post-rock or more like post-rock neoclassical? What's the more dominant world of music in your work?
AL: For me, it's post-rock. And this classical part is something that comes to us on its own, we didn't choose it to be our thing, we just started to make post-rock and it came to us.
RG: On the topic of classical music, perhaps we can add that our last release is very much inspired by this genre. What we did was we took the Great Mass, a mass written by Mozart, and chose one composition from it, called Kyrie. We slowed it down like maybe four times and then we tried to copy the dynamics of the result of the whole process. So let's say that the song is five minutes long. Then we slowed it down so it's 70 minutes long instead. And then we tried to follow the dynamics of the song. So when it's loud, we would be loud. And if it's bass and, let's say piccolo flute, then we tried to play bass and something that reminded us of a piccolo flute. So in that sense it's very, very much inspired by classical music.
Some of us like Arvo Pärt (Estonian composer - author’s note) as well, so we try to understand a bit how he does what he does.
ŁŚ: I wanted to ask you about those inspirations. Who inspires you the most? Except for Mozart, but we'll come back to Kyrie in a second.
RG: That's the funny thing about this band, everyone has different inspirations. Really, the favorite band of one of us may be a band someone else hates. And so on. So we have really opposing views, but me and Linus (Hjerpe, guitarist in Star of Heaven - author’s note), we listened mostly to metal music in our younger years. When I was growing up, Scandinavian black metal was a very big thing here in Sweden.
ŁŚ: And you, Anna, you said you listen to classical music. I don't think you could have two more distant things, right? Black metal and classical music.
AL: I like so many different kinds of music. I like melodic music the most, but it could be any genre.
ŁŚ: Like Abba?
AL: Yeah, for example! But I also like black metal. And when music gives me these dark melodic vibes, I'm immediately sold. It's also very much about the chord progression and things like that.
TR: I, for example, don't really listen to post-rock at all. And it means that I don't really know what I'm aiming for when playing music. And I think maybe that's partially why our band sounds like it does. Like something different. Perhaps we're aiming for post-rock because that's the closest thing to what we imagine, but then it ends up being something different.
AL: I often want to create a darker song, but it just becomes what it becomes. It feels like we can’t really control that.
RG: And you don't really want to either. For instance, I like Sigur Rós very much, but I don't want to try to make Sigur Rós music because that would feel like a pale copy. You want to try to find your own little niche, something you've never heard before.
ŁŚ: From my experience, the best post-rock comes from people who are not necessarily interested in creating post-rock. They want to make something unique and then they somehow end up creating some kind of post-rock.
TR: I think that if we weren’t labeled post-rock, some of our songs wouldn’t be considered as part of this genre.
RG: Since we use a lot of crescendos and stuff like that, we’re automatically thrown into that genre. That’s my take at least.
ŁŚ: What is the characteristic of post-rock music that you value the most? I could see that in some descriptions you mentioned the cinematic feeling of your music as one of those, but also the emotional component.
RG: I want to make music that is worthy, if you understand what I mean. Something you don't have to be ashamed of when it comes to the emotional moments. So it never sounds like clown music. Not that there’s anything wrong with clown music, but you wouldn't play it at the funeral, or perhaps you would, but that would be a very different type of funeral.
Music that is worthy, well suited for the dark or but also for the happy moments.
ŁŚ: So we’re talking about emotions then. Is it easy for you to transform emotions you want to express into your music?
AL: Yeah, sometimes. I often feel like I want to express even more than we end up doing. I also easily become very happy when the music we make becomes something beautiful. I'm the one who is the most in love with our music. I'm our biggest fan (laughs).
Sometimes it's frustrating because you're looking for something that you can't really find. But at other times it's such a beautiful feeling just to sit there and play. And I think that's what I aim for, to just be in the middle of the emotions. Even if it sounds maybe a little bit cheesy.
TR: Coming back to your original question. I think describing our music as cinematic and emotional is more like an afterthought. It's not like we're always aiming for certain emotions, it just turns out this way in the end. And then I start thinking about our compositions with pictures. This one talks about this sort of scene. For example, we have a song that in my head feels like the last day of school. It’s not titled like that, there is no clue that this piece is about this theme. It just feels like it.
ŁŚ: Now I have to ask which one it is!
RG: It’s called number IV but it’s the third one on Kyrie. We have a song called III, but we haven’t added it to the album. It’s complicated.
ŁŚ: How long have you been playing together?
RG: 15 years?
AL: 12 maybe?
RG: This may interest you. When we started playing together, we wanted to make Swedish cover songs of Kino, the old Russian pop band. But it quickly spiraled out of control and became what you know now.
AL: Yeah, my father was from Russia. So when I was a teenager I felt connected to Russia and Russian culture. So I was working in Moscow for a few weeks and listened to Kino. And then I started to translate the lyrics and that’s how the whole idea of the cover band came about. Even now we have a track called Kino. I'm not ashamed of it, but last years changed a lot. I'm not so proud of my Russian side anymore. It's a little bit strange because, say, 20 years ago, it was something that made me unique in a cool way. So that's why maybe I feel uneasy about it now. And you are from Poland…
ŁŚ: No, don’t worry! I understand that there's politics and there are human beings.
RG: Swedes also conquered Poland, I believe. The good times. (laughs)
ŁŚ: Give us back those treasures you stole! (laughs)
RG: We've lost them. Sorry.
Swedish guests in Poland (1655)
ŁŚ: There is one more connection to Poland in your works. You released a single track about Marie Curie-Skłodowska who was famously Polish. Why did you choose to honor this person in particular?
TR: It was a part of an art project where they had made graphics and texts based on famous people and then asked us if we wanted to make a song about someone. We chose her because I guess we all felt like she was the most interesting person.
ŁŚ: Her name Curie and your new album Kyrie sound so similar that it's almost impossible that it's just coincidence.
RG: It's unfortunate for us as well, because we have to really specify which song we mean.
AL: We are so confused every time we have to rehearse now.
TR: And the first album is also just a bunch of numbers. It's incredibly confusing, so we don't know which song we're thinking about.
RG: Yeah, we have nicknames for the songs so we are not lost all the time.
ŁŚ: Like The End of School Day song, right? Is there a reason why you don’t choose titles for your compositions? Or is it just something that you don't like doing?
TR: Maybe because you don't want to influence someone's experience of listening to our tracks with a lame title.
AL: What I like about instrumental music is that there are no words that tell you what to think or what to feel about a song. It's all in the listener's head.
ŁŚ: So, let's come to your new album, Kyrie. The first thing you published was actually the live album from a concert that you held in a church, and three years later, which is right now, you released the studio album. Was it planned or maybe it was a coincidence?
AL: It just happened. We had almost everything ready but some of us are really fixed on details. Perfectionists. And since we all have full-time jobs, it took time. At our concerts, we like playing songs before they are released and since we are not so famous no one gets angry because something's not available yet. We can do whatever we want.
So then our friend recorded this gig for us and it was a good recording. We wanted to release it also to say that we're still alive.
ŁŚ: I hope it doesn’t mean that we will have to wait another six years for the next album?
AL: No. Rasmus has a really good idea.
RG: So we have a new idea about how to record fast. Our major problem is that much of our time goes into relearning what we came up with before. Record fast instead of waiting one and a half years and then trying to rediscover how we did things.
TR: It's not only the production. When you're trying to recreate the feeling that you had when you played 3 years before, you have some sort of emotional picture of what you're trying to play again, but the feeling just isn't the same.
RG: I've heard this being called “the demo disease”. When you work too much on the demo, so then when you're supposed to record it for real, you are just constantly dissatisfied because it doesn't sound like the first version you did.
ŁŚ: With the new album finally released, you are coming to the 5NDREAS Festival in November. So can you tell us what we can expect from your performance at the festival?
AL: We’ve never played outside of Sweden. It will be fun!
RG: We're going to play our songs and try not to, you know, screw them up. We're not going to play Kyrie in its entirety or we're not going to play only old songs or whatever. It’s gonna be a mix. But we look forward to seeing the other bands play too.
AL: And we really hope that people will enjoy our concert and that they can feel all the feelings, so it's a special moment for them. That would be nice. 🦢
The piano-driven post-rock from Australia is not a strange concept to me as Tangled Thoughts of Leaving's No Tether is an album I consider one of the best within the entire genre. What Most You Fear explore similar destination but the jazzy influences traded for the atmospheric and I can't stress enough how good this trade was as the debut album of the Geelong-based band is stunning.
If you think that a combination of piano keys and violin sounds automatically means a brooding and melancholic post-rock soundscape, I have to warn you: although What Most You Fear retain this artful approach to music, the post-rock they create can really bite. Yes, the compositions start as delicate gems with the artsy mood but they soon become energetic, guitar-fueled beasts with interestingly written structures, but also totally untamed character. I just love this combination. A perfect musical rendition of the beauty and the beast concept, making me think of Her Name Is Calla in their most post-rocky times or Hope of the States and their use of piano and violins in otherwise indie rock-paced songs.
Proposal is the band's debut EP/short album and it's really just too short. I feel like the tracks would only gain by adding some additional minutes, but maybe it's just that I like longer pieces. On the other hand, maybe the band really wanted to preserve the energetic vibes the shorter compositions give away. Because when you listen to The sea was rising and we tried to stay or Morning (still burning), you can't NOT feel the thrill of excitement crawling through your back.
Taking the best features from two music genres I'm fond of and creating something new out of them, this is the way the project of Dean Garcia and Jarek Leśkiewicz operates. And they've been doing that for 14 years now, in every few year bringing us a noteworthy album from the depths of Bandcamp.
As a great underground music project would do, the British-Polish duo don't feature their music on the commercial streaming platforms which, for me as well, makes them more difficult to follow these days. But luckily Unrest broke the bubble and came to my music-sphere with all of its trip-hop-influenced noise rock beauty. Both gentlemen are, of course, very well-known from trip-hop-only SPC ECO (and yes, Rose Berlin naturally features on Unrest as well) and the link between the two is clearly noticeable. Generally, I feel like it is a trip-hop band that invited other sounds for a joint party and acted as a perfect host.
It's the shoegazey guitars, it's the prog-rock feel (Flashbangs) and the garage-like, honest message to the audience. The mix is staggering, as always, but also feels like one coherent thing, as if trip-gaze was an already established genre, not a Bandcamp curiosity. And perhaps it should be, especially when combined with the duo's anti-establishment views reflected in both their music and how they manage it.
