Rest You Sleeping Giant - Night Heron (2022)

Ethan Helfrich, Indiana-based ambient artist, creates his music as Rest You Sleeping Giant. This year, he released a new album called Night Heron, and filled it with very moody, very peaceful ambient music. 

The inspiration for this album is clear; everything here is about nature as seen from the closest proximity, during the artist's walks at the Skokie Lagoons in Winnetka near Chicago he must have gathered tons of ethereal inspirations ready to transform into sounds. This must be a very calming place as the music that got born form this experience could hardly be stiller. The drony soundscapes have ability to relax the listeners and take them somewhere that feels safe and soothing. The album is accompanied by a very decisive anti-war statement so it's worth noticing that "all proceeds will be donated to the British Red Cross to support humanitarian aid for Ukraine".

Night Heron costs 5 EUR (4 GBP).

Check: Night Heron

Country: Indiana, US

Genre: calm soundscape

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Seven Hour Days - Coast to the Clouds (2022)

Seven Hour Days is Steve Matzkov, an Australian artist known from projects like The High Impedance, Dobson & Fitch and Matzal. This time, he released his new album called Coast to the Clouds via Shore Dive Records and filled with a lo-fi, fantastically engaging shoegaze sounds.

The compositions here are very noisy with this lo-fi kind of guitar noise that makes everything sounds very garage-like and very honest at the same time. There's a solid dose of pedal effects everywhere and the overall vibe of the EP surely makes you think of the early shoegaze era. Especially that the vocaloid-provided vocals are highly psychedelic, often used more as an additional instrument then actually a vehicle for lyrics and these are the parts I appreciate the most. Especially that the whole MBV-like guitar experimentations that fill the speakers are of the best kind, as it is the case in my personal favourite, Stay Away

Coast to the Clouds costs 5 USD.

Check: Stay Away

Country: Australia

Genre: lo-fi shoegaze

Label: Shore Dive Records

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Besna - Zverstvá (2022)

Besna are from Bratislava, Slovakia and create "mournful melodies and mad screams from the Carpatian underneath". Their heavy music is complimented by folk inspirations and a good deal of atmosphere building. We can now check it out on the band's debut album called Zverstvá.

The band has this unique ability to successfully combine the aggression and rapidness of black metal with catchiness and attractiveness of the tunes. Yes, it is extremely loud and guitar-heavy, there are only metal-like screaming vocals, it does sound violent and desperate and its this music's advantage, no doubt about it. But there's also a good flow, the compositions are very much engaging and entertaining, not only for the metal music lover - also post-rock aficionado would find it very appealing.

Besna seem to take inspirations from the might of nature (in L'adovec with its touching similes: "A snowflake falls, followed by another/ A blizzard of lies/ Beneath a ton of sediment/ the truth is altered") and folk art. The latter is not only about the beautiful cover art that uses a minimalist take on eastern folklore, but it's also about the construction of the songs that, when you think about it, is not so different from the traditional folk music.  

Zverstvá costs 4 EUR.

Check: Spev Drozda

Country: Slovakia

Genre: atmospheric black metal

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Shadow Universe - Subtle Realms, Subtle Worlds (2022)

This year is marked by the comebacks of the piano-based modern post-rock bands and now, after Nordic Giants, it's time for the Slovenian Shadow Universe to show their third album. For me, their debuting The Unspeakable World was one of those surprising hits I hadn't seen coming and til this day it remains one of my favourite albums of the genre. Subtle Realms, Subtle Worlds feels slightly different but it's not a bad kind of different.

A very big accent is put on the piano bits. The whole tracks are driven by the piano keys without sounding too depressing; instead, the piano makes them vivid and energetic in a different way most post-rock compositions are. Somehow even the inclusion of strings in Don't Look at It and You'll See It doesn't mean it's automatically a melancholia-infused song; it's slower and perhaps more beautiful but the pace is still there and it's quite surprising. Obviously, the moments of the neoclassical beauty are more often then not interrupted by the modern-sounding post-rock music that introduces a huge-scaled grandeur feeling, not so different from what Nordic Giants did this year. 

This multitude of various sounds complimented by subtle electronica and trumpets (or trumpet-like samples) in Losing Home and the glitches in Antares Goes Supernova is what makes the album a must-go-to for the fans of less traditional, more modern and eclectic post-rock music.

Subtle Realms, Subtle Worlds costs 8.5 EUR (7 GBP).

Shadow Universe - The Unspeakable World (2017)

Check: Don't Look at It and You'll See It 

Country: Slovenia

Genre: modern post-rock

Label: Monotreme Records

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E-L-R - Vexier (2022)

I was lucky enough to witness E-L-R's beginnings when back in 2019 they performed live during the Bergmal Festival in Zurych with their very fresh debut album Mænad. It was quite mind-blowing so I couldn't wait for the continuation of their career. The struggle is over with the band's new album called Vexier.

The combination of very heavy guitar riffs from the sludge/post-metal musical area with the dispersed and airy but also very psychedelic vocals is the core of the Swiss band's work. The said vocals express extremely ethereal lyrics ("opiate the Sun" sounds like something taken from a braver, lyrics-wise, version of the old Slowdive or MBV) divided into short phrases that make them feel like tribal-esque mesmerizing chanting. All of this makes this sophomore album a very literal continuation of the debut, including such an interesting detail as longer pauses between tracks filled with subtle sound samples of cracking fire and other nature-originating moody tunes.

The mesmerizing features of the band's works are present also in the music itself: its slow, doom-like pace and psychedelic guitars make it easy to get lost within the sounds. As their Bandcamp page describes it, they "oscillates elegantly between velvet darkness and flaring bursts of high energy" but the bursts are always toned down, covered by the layers of post-metal noise that makes everything a very homogeneous and smooth (the velvet reference is on point!) sound.

Vexier costs 6.99 USD.

E-L-R - Mænad (2019)

Check: Seeds

Country: Switzerland

Genre: ethereal post-metal

Label: Prophecy Productions

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Dear Gravity & We Dream of Eden - Holocene (2022)

Two years after their previous release, Riven, two ambient artists - Minnesota-based Mike Graff aka Dear Gravity and Tennessee's Kirk Smith (We Dream of Eden) created together a short but beautiful EP. Released by Echoes Blue Music Holocene makes a fantastic blend of delicate ambient and neoclassical soundscape.

The short album depicts "the concept of passing life down to the next generation" and tries to pour the artists' personal feelings onto the audience. Musically speaking it's an electronic soundscape that is first of all moody and, secondly, ready too strike awe in the audience with the tasteful use of synth sounds. Although there are traces of melodies (like the leitmotif in Adventus), the album's main goal has to be creating this audio place where a listener can get lost for a second - the slower, calmer tracks here (like Tragedy & Triumph) and their homogeneous, thick soundscape surely work that way.

Holocene costs 5 USD.

Check: Sojourn

Country: Minnesota/Tennessee, US

Genre: lively soundscape

Label: Echoes Blue Music

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Thought Trials - Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing (2022)

Josh Martin comes from Buffalo and makes his music under the moniker of Thought Trials. After releasing several singles and EPs, this year the time has come for him to show the first LP called Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing, and, spoiler alert, it's really good.

The artist feels good in more than one convention; the album starts like a good old post-rock release should - with guitar-based, atmosphere-building composition that is being ornamented with moody spoken word samples. But already the second track, Kintsugi featuring Lauren Davis and Erin Malone of Greybloom, adds to this mix a real guitar riff-fest that is complimented with post-hardcore vocals that create this engaging, not-too-overwhelming mix of various approaches to good, mostly instrumental guitar music. And there are fragments that get close to instrumental ambient too, especially the most poignant track here, the album's closure in the depression-themed Belonging.

Let's not forget that track Hedonism is featured on the Ukraine Relief Compilation by The Post-Everything Collective, which, apart from the obvious, money-raising reasons, show-cases a huge range of big post-rock talents and the sole fact that Thought Trials is present there, speaks volumes.

Full of Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing costs 10 USD.

Check: Guilt and Shame

Country: New York, US

Genre: solo dark post-rock

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Deserta - Every Moment, Everything You Need (2022)

I am no doubt a fan of Matt Doty's work. His solo debut Black Aura My Sun was probably the best album of 2020 I missed and didn't include on this blog. I'm not going to make the same mistake again, especially that Every Moment, Everything You Need is at least as good as its predecessor. 

Doty's signature sound is the heavier and slower face of shoegaze music. This is the kind of sound that lazily pours out of speakers and drowns everything around in the melancholic, tear-jerking atmosphere. It doesn't have any troubles with catching the audience attention either - the mesmerizing abilities are hidden in the heavy layers of sound that keep overwhelming the audience throughout the release. In some places, his music makes me think of a heavier version of Hanging Valleys or Crushed Stars with its slowcore and superdreamy mood, but in other, it's surprisingly a dreamy variation on trip-hop as Where Did You Go openly shows this ethereal electronica inspirations.

Quite suitably for the music, the lyrics are filled with melancholia and worn out emotions. There's little fire in the artist's words, it's more about acceptation of the sad, dark places one could find oneself in as in Goodbye Vista: "I left/ Mindless/ Just want to reach you... Where was the insight/ Where was your mind". If you want to drown in melancholic music, this is the first address to go to.

Every Moment, Everything You Need costs 8 USD.

Check: Visions

Country: California, US

Genre: thick shoegaze

Label: felte

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Blushing - Possessions (2022)

The Texas-based Blushing debuted (world-wide but also on my blog) with their brilliant EP Tether back in 2017. Now, 6 years (!) later, they released the sophomore album Possessions, making sure that they should be counted as one of the big nugaze/dream pop bands out there these days.

As the canons want it, the noisy pop from the Americans involves huge amounts of reverbs, guitar noise and soft vocals. But their new release is also catchier and more psychedelic than what I associate the band with. The high-paced tracks go on and on with upbeat tunes and catchy riffs, making your body involuntarily dance to the guitar psychedelia they offer. This makes me think of a lighter, dreamier version of The Pains of Being Pure at Heart that is able to write captivating melodies and drown them in the ethereal atmosphere with ease - both in the faster hits and the slightly slower, very much psychedelic compositions like Gel.

Undoubtedly, a big thing for the band is the cooperation with Lush's Miki Berenyi; the icon's guest vocals (together with unorthodox backing vocals) made Blame one of the more memorable shoegaze song of the beginning of the year. Really well-balanced, top-of-the-shelf release.

Possessions costs 8.99 USD.

Blushing - Tether (2017)

Blushing - Blushing (2019)

Check: Blame

Country: Texas, US

Genre: nugaze pop

Label: Kanine Records

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Konstruct - Soundworks (2022)

Konstruct is a trio made of talented ambient/neoclassical artists with Simon McCorry being the best known on this blog. Apart from the British cellist, it involves also Alexander Caminada a.k.a. Phonsonic and Andrew Heath. All of them joined forces to create a unique soundscape of ambient's mystery and neoclassicism's beauty. 

This is a recorded performance they gave at the Ground Works event and the music they served there is filled with audio references to nature, the Earth and the landscape we live within. There's a handful of very tangible, very organic sound samples that are woven into a blend of ambient and neoclassical music. The latter is dominated (though it feels wrong saying that abut such a delicate entity) by piano keys and McCorry's melancholic cello music used to create sad, slow drone. This all results in a rather gloomy take on instrumental ambient that manages to be attractive and pretty at the same time.

Soundworks costs 6 EUR (5 GBP)

Simon McCorry - Border Land (2019)

Check: Lines Across the Land 

Country: UK

Genre: neoclassical soundscape

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zachwyt - zachwyt (2022)

I love debuts like this. An artist from the city of Oświęcim, Poland, creates some particularly noisy take on lo-fi dream pop and released it under the moniker of zachwyt. Think blackgaze and dream pop at once. He released his first more serious self-titled EP this year and I have my fingers crossed for more music from his part soon.

Zachwyt (translating to "awe") is frank to state that his music is "focused on balance between dreamy and loud noises". This is similar path Have a Nice Life (or Sun Addicted Family if you want an obscure comparison based on this blog's content) took, one filled with heavy and overwhelming use of synth sounds and guitars (not as metal-like though) that are as loud as they are smooth. This goes well with the vocals that are distorted to the ridiculous point where they sound like whispers somehow audible on the shoegaze-like backgrounds. This music is mostly focused on creating a crushing and beautiful atmosphere but there is one song that is very much tilted towards dream pop music. Czekam aż spadnie deszcz ("I'm Waiting for the Rain to Come") has clearer vocals and pace with dream pop-like vocals that express lyrics that are as ethereal and melancholic as you can get with the chorus translating to "I'm lost in labyrinths/ I'm lost in my thoughts/ I'm waiting for the rain to come". It took only this short EP for me to become the artist's hardcore fan.

zachwyt costs 2 EUR (10 PLN).

Check: Czekam aż spadnie deszcz 

Country: Poland

Genre: synth shoegaze

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Blurred City Lights - Micropolis (2022)

Blurred City Lights appeared on this blog once before, back in 2018, when the duo released their second album Volker. But the artists themselves have been a big part of this blog anyway: Dean Garcia with the phenomenal trip-hop SPC ECO and Jarek Leśkiewicz as Opollo or half of Sunset Wrecks. There was little doubt that the new release from the two should be posted about here.

The whole project balances on the border between dreamy genres and trip-hop and progressive rock. Somehow, for me, Leśkiewicz's vocals are exactly between Riverside's Mariusz Duda and Slowdive's Rachel Goswell. If one had to label this music, they would probably go for dreamy trip-hop though, and I can absolutely hear that (especially in the parts where both are helped by another familiar face, the second half of SPC ECO - Rose Berlin). I appreciate both artist's skills in creating this trip-hoppy soundscape filled with subtle beats and imagine-fuelling electronic sounds all over them. However, this wouldn't be a complete picture since the duo are also well suited for guitar sounds as well, sometimes quite heavy, sometimes quite grungy and riff-oriented. It really is a blend of many things and as such, could only be appreciated. Especially that the whole album feels very coherent with its airy and surreal atmosphere that happens to be expressed in many different ways.

Micropolis costs 7.5 EUR (6 GBP).

Blurred City Lights - Volker (2018)

Check: All My Days

Country: UK/Poland

Genre: ethereal trip-hop

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YRRE - Luhlae x The Witch (2022)

When talking about Swiss music this year, I am excitingly waiting for E-L-R's sophomore album. But there is something else that proved to be as compelling and gloomy. YRRE's debut album Luhlae x The Witch is a soundtrack of fear and noise disguised as modern drone post-metal album and I love it.

This very special album is "an adaption of a ciné-concert composed to the movie ‘The VVitch'" by Robert Eggers and was created for the festival 2300 Plan 9 les Etranges Nuits du Cinéma and performed for the first time at Bikini Test in La Chaux-de-Fonds under the name Luhlae x The Witch (thus the title of the album of course). The movie itself grew up to be an icon of ambitious horror genre and the original music by Mark Korven is masterpiece on its own. This album seems to be an interpretation of the movie through post-rock and post-metal sounds. There won't be any surprise when revealed that the album is particularly dark and heavy. It achieves that with very modern post-rock/metal means though.

While the band describe themselves as dark ambient noise, there's way too much of the guitars and drums and other effects. It is, yes, soaked in noise which makes the angry and desperate post-metal vocals that sound in the backgrounds even more poignant. And in general, the feeling of horror is very well tangible in every second of this fantastic release. There's quality of sound, there's inspiring noise, there's captivating ambiance. Fantastic.

Luhlae x The Witch costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Uhtceare

Country: Switzerland

Genre: noise post-metal

Label: Hummus Records

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itlookslikeablackhole - Looking at the World with Love (2022)

Formed back in 2018, the California-based post-rock band itlookslikeablackhole seem to be releasing some material every year with one album and three EP as for now. The last EP called Looking at the World with Love was released in January and there's some interesting and fairly dark post-rock music there.

Although the release's title suggests something positive and light, the music on the EP is actually quite dark. The post-rock here is very much oriented on the guitars' role and there's a big focus on the riffs throughout the release, however, the overall atmosphere makes a great and gloomy impression. While the compositions here don't strike as explicitly loud, the slower pace and the ambiance itself, make the music feel heavier than usual, even if the guitar riffs provide a fair deal of melodies. It is especially audible in the outstanding What Lies Beyond the Darkness, a track that deliberately introduces a concept but then there's no actual follow-up to the title's statement, similarly to other tracks on the album, making me think that the title's optimism may not be real after all and that everything is way more darker and enigmatic.

Looking at the World with Love costs 5 USD.

Check: What Lies Beyond the Darkness

Country: California, US

Genre: dark post-rock

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wøunds - No Beauty in the World (2022)

Igor Imbu from Chicago is better known as wøunds, and under this moniker, he released already several albums (it's difficult to follow as the numbers vary from source to source) with the newest being Past Inside the Present's No Beauty in the World.

It's probably the kind of ambient I like the most. What at first seems to be a slow and motionless ambient soundscape, soon can be recognized as bursting with life - those small electronic buzzings, the barely audible piano keys, the noise parts that are nothing more than fresh blows of breeze. It does sometimes get a bit louder, there are some hints of synth massiveness, but the compositions never really cross the line of the airy ambient.

No Beauty in the World costs 7 USD.

Check: There Has To Be a Reason

Country: Illinois, US

Genre: airy ambient

Label: Past Inside the Present

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Isahi - extromantic (2022)

6 years after I posted about his debut album Nisahilism and fours years after Diluted Self​-​portrait, the South Korean artist known as Isahi is back with another exciting album. Extromantic follows the path of  the neoclassicism-induced heavy post-rock/post-metal music that is as beautiful as it is destructive.

Isahi's music is clearly guitar-oriented but what makes it extremely attractive is the heavy use of synths - this combination situates him somewhere around Heave a Nice Life and the blackgaze community with Unreqvited as a perfect example. Especially that, although the artist's music is mainly instrumental, there are post-metal's withdrawn and distorted screams audible, giving some of the desperate violence to the overall synthy and smooth compositions. The artist uses those and many more means to create diverse and attention-grabbing songs with Anorexia as perfect example: loud and tear-jerking synthy passages, post-metal screaming and sudden changes of pace ornamented with piano-like sounds and samples make it a track that is difficult to be indifferent to. The fact that it is followed by almost exclusively piano-based For Those Who Drown in Me makes it only more stunning. The album goes on and on, it's almost an hour long, but the artist made sure that the audience is not bored even for a second and this is probably the most important thing.

Extromantic costs whatever you want to pay.

Isahi - Nisahilism (2016)

Check: Anorexia 

Country: South Korea

Genre: synth-heavy blackgaze

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Turmallina - Aurora (2022)

Turmallina come from Brazil and have just released their debut album called Aurora. It is filled with catchy tunes wrapped in ethereal blanket of subtle noise and distortions. It is the kind of music that should be danced to, even if it's not necessarily happy.

As so many artists do nowadays, Turmallina's inspirations come from the urge to provide some escapism means and lose the burden of feelings, as they say: "in times as distressing and new as this period of pandemics, Aurora comes with a strong sense of identification, nostalgia and, above all, an exit to another time, to a dream". Their idea to achieve that was to create melodic and carefree-sounding indie pop with dreamy vibes all over. The album was made far from professional studios and it is audible, but, as often, the lo-fi atmosphere only makes this burst of feeling more honest and genuine. And the further one goes through the album, the louder, more nugaze it gets, with Escadas and Nádia sounding like the Brazilian response to The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.

Aurora costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Escadas 

Country: Brazil

Genre: dreamy psychedelic pop

Label: Tratore

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Sei Still - El Refugio (2021)

Back in November last year, Fuzz Club Records released the sophomore album from the Berlin-based Mexican psychedelia band Sei Still. Their music feels like a fresh take on very well-grounded German psychedelic music scene and so El Refugio (the title gaining so much more meaning at the moment) is a must-go-to for the genre's fans.

This is the kind of music I automatically put under the psychedelic post-punk label. The guitar haze and the withdrawn vocals are way more important here than the melodies themselves. The overall feeling is certainly cold and distanced, following the established krautrock blueprint, fitting perfectly into the genre. However, as the label states, after their move from Mexico to Europe, the artists decided to go more into the post-punk darkness, leaving some of the mesmerizing psychedelia behind. From my perspective, they achieved a perfect balance between the two, making me think of 10 000 Russos (the band, not the current situation). That said, there's still some of the melodic tunes buried under the darkness' heaviness, best audible in my favourite track on this album: Me persigue.

El Refugio costs 8.5 EUR (7 GBP).

Check: Me persigue

Country: Mexico/Germany

Genre: psychedelic post-punk

Label: Fuzz Club

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Watchcamp - Best Singles of January-February'22 with Builder, Minaxi, Sole Solitude, Thy Pallor, Tukisigure

Builder - Terrapin

A german duo consisting of Emanuel Oropesa and Sebastian Balk released their third, slightly longer single and filled it with dark and massive guitar post-rock. The quality of their music is clear and the ability to crush the audience with sounds - wort admiring. The two songs cost 5 EUR.

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Minaxi - The Deep Blue Sea Conveys Your Love

Although they describe themselves as alternative rock band, the new single from the Americans from Minaxi is mostly about dreamy atmosphere and pop's catchiness. Also the remix made by Simon Scott shows vibes of utter ethereality and I dig it. The single costs 3 USD.

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Sole Solitude - MEDS

Distorted vocals and slow beats, extremely ethereal atmosphere and melodies. The Washington-based artist brings some very modern-sounding electronica meeting dreamy slowcore in his new single. Great tunes. Two tracks cost 7 USD.

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Thy Pallor - The Day Everything Begins​.​.​.

Turkish artist released their first single with clearly lo-fi but very moody and ethereal take on distorted post-metal music.The single costs 1 USD.

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Tukisigure - Inori 

The name of the Japanese project translates to "drizzling rain on a moonlit night" and fittingly, the artist presents music that is both ethereal and post-rock-heavy. The first track from them shows some technical difficulties but still promises some great music. The single costs whatever you want to pay.

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