Meierkord/Andersson - Passager (2025)

Two Scandinavian artists Henrik Meierkord and Pelle Andersson joined forces to create a gem of an album. This neoclassical release is as beautiful as it is dark and unnerving.

"A thoughtful soundscape filled with blackness and sadness but also streaks of light" is what the album is called on the artists' Bandcamp and there is no way to deny that. The piano keys come and go, making the world a bit more beautiful with each stroke. But they are only a counterbalance here. The slowness of the compositions and the gravity of strings in the backgrounds make the instrumental soundscapes ridiculously unnerving in the most attractive of ways.

And there is a good reason for the concept for the album as Andersson had to face the cruelty of serious sickness and all the emotions it brings with itself. Once again, the quote from the artists describes it in the best way possible, calling the album "passages between hope and warmth, despair and panic. Where light meets darkness, the beautiful the distorted".

Passager costs 7 EUR (72 SEK).

Check: Försjunken

Country: Sweden

Genre: dark neoclassical

Label: Ella Ruth instituten

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Nac/Hut Report - Blue Afternoon (2025)

There is few Polish music projects that can be identified after the first second of their tracks. Nac/Hut Report is certainly one of them: the uniqueness of their ambient pop is genuinely impressive and it's not only uniqueness for its own sake. The duo creates music that feels a bit like a journey to some extraterrestrial lands and a bit like something extremely close to the heart.

Normally ambient pop makes me think of drone backgrounds and barely audible vocals put over them. Basically Midwife. But the Kraków-based project refreshes the concept, developing the backgrounds into full-fledged experimental sounds with some industrial flavour to them, thoroughly pressed down by the gramophone-like noise that makes the colourful mosaic of very different sounds feel like a coherent canvas that can be painted over with the vocals. And those also are a little bit different: they are quite well audible but definitely not easy to decipher either so that the mystery that embraces Nac/Hut Report's music deepens and deepens with every song and every album they produce.

I particularly like when those layers of sounds, not very loud on their own, are placed on each other, creating a sound that is not far from overwhelming while still being the slowcorest of slowcores. The duo definitely makes for one of the most least-known-but-deserving-much-more artists based in this country.

Blue Afternoon costs 2.5 EUR (10 PLN).

Check: Comet

Country: Poland

Genre: experimental ambient pop

Label: enjoy life

Nac/Hut Report - Absent (2023)

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Snakeskin - We Live in Sand (2025)

It's been already some years since I posted about Julia Sabra, my favourite Lebanese artist who makes her name as a vocalist in Postcards but also as half of a music duo with Fadi Tabbal. The title of the album they debuted as a duo became the name of the project, but the music stays the same: more experimental than Postcards, but still fairytale-ishly ethereal.

The music here is different from your ordinary dream pop charmers' sounds. The glitchy, the uncomfortably noisy and a bit industrial meets the airy and wavy in the best way possible. It makes the skin crawl a little, but, before it gets too much to bear, it gets ironed over with some beautiful guitar sounds. Or flute. Or cute electronica. But at the same time, it's also very much minimalist: there doesn't have to be much to create the atmosphere and the duo proves it over and over again. The vocalizations in Olive Groves is joined by pipe organ-like sounds and not much more and that's just an example.

But everything here is glued together by Sabra's ethereal vocals. This is deceptive, however, as the beauty of the vocals is counterbalanced by the gravity of the lyrics, commenting on the situation in Lebanon loomed over by the never-ending Near East war. "It’s a stunning paradox — a song about birth, caught in the middle of destruction. Hope, fragile and flickering, seeps through the rubble. Snakeskin has always thrived in extremes, but here the contrast is sharpened to a knife’s edge". It's true, but it's also true that the third album from the duo is their darkest yet but seeing how the situation in the region develops, it may not be the darkest in general.

We Live in Sand costs 10 USD.

Check: Olive Groves

Country: Lebanon

Genre: experimental dream pop

Label: Ruptured / Beacon Sound

Julia Sabra and Fadi Tabbal - Snakeskin (2022)

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Amber Ambedo - Invierno Ambedo (2025)

Orchestral post-rock will always have the face of GY!BE, but there is a number of smaller bands who want to go in a similar direction of the grand and diversified sounds of post-rock music that could as well be created by a real-life orchestra. One of them, Portland-based Amber Ambedo, has recently released their debut album and it's a debut to remember.

Thank you to my dunk!festival mates who gave me a hint about this band because the merciless algorithms didn't notify me of its existence and I wouldn't know otherwise. The Portlanders make "instrumental music that hits you right in the feels—and then lingers like a dream you can’t quite shake" - a true cinematic post-rock that tells stories without using any words. The compositions are complex, but easy to follow, the pace is not too fast but also far from slow and the instruments include piano and strings which means that I'm immediately sold. What I miss are some passages of real noise cause right now the songs sound like they end before something vital happened, but perhaps not everything has to be the noisiest in history.

On the other hand, I feel like this structural approach to music makes it indeed extremely cinematic. I can see the band performing to one of those silent movies on an event in an old cinema. But, I have to admit, the album sounds terrific also in a lightless room with speakers spitting out the notes into the darkness.

Invierno Ambedo costs 7 USD.

Check: Gathering Light in the Dark

Country: Oregon, US

Genre: orchestral post-rock

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Aurora Falls - MAZE (2025)

I have to admit that I missed this band. And they are from Poland! And it's not even their debut album! It had to be my foreign friends who let me know about the Poznań-based outfit and it's a great thing they did since Maze (released all the way back in spring, but I really wanted to mention it on the blog!) offers some very decent post-rock music and I don't use words like this lightly.

While this is the kind of instrumental guitar music that is very much focused on the melodic side of post-rock, the artists know very well when they need to step on it and brings some noisy bliss to the audience. It's still not the overwhelmingly heavy guitar wall I would perhaps prefer, but it's an interesting take on the melody-filled rest of the album. Especially tracks like Second Chance, Third Time create a good blend of fast and melodic with fast and louder music. 

It's no wonder to me that the whole description of the album consists of a quote from Haruki Murakami: "Has the dark shadow really disappeared?/ Or is it inside me, concealed, waiting for its chance to reappear?". The album, vibrant and full of life, certainly is lined with some darker tones.

Maze costs 6 EUR (25 PLN).

Check: Second Chance, Third Time

Country: Poland

Genre: melodic post-rock

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Mumrunner - Yearning Heart (2025)

I can hardly wrap my head around it, but it's already almost a decade since I discovered my favourite Finnish shoegazey-dream popey band through their brilliant Gentle Slopes EP. Time flies when you're not looking... Luckily the Tampere-based group still does their signature light but moody, melodic but airy take on the haziest of music genres.

I like how carefree and soft the music sounds. There's certainly some element of twee and lo-fi music in here, although probably in the spirit, not necessarily in the form because the album sounds well-developed and -made. Most of the time it's the melodies and the easy-listening vibes that matter, making the whole thing sounding like a younger sister of Pia Fraus. It's definitely not about the noisy element. But it doesn't mean that there are no disruptions. There are and they always catch attention, like the change of the tone in Violet or the sudden stop of Hawkeye.

Yearning Heart costs 9 EUR.

Check: Violet 

Country: Finland

Genre: melodic dream pop

Mumrunner - Valeriana (2020)

Mumrunner - Gentle Slopes EP (2016)

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H E X - II (2025)

Somewhere on the verge of post-rock, gothic rock and experimental music sit the five artists of the Swiss outfit H E X and they sit there and make their difficult to categorize music. Their second album leaves the audience with the feeling of participating in something unique. Dark and heavy but also unique.

Is this just post-rock with vocals? I doubt it. Is it just dark indie? Not really. The long compositions are based on the vocal parts that are not meant to be very catchy but rather atmospheric and mysterious. Remember the Icelandic band called The Autumns? It's what this music reminds me of. Very indie rocky in a way, but having also a lot of space for gloomy and heavy guitar work to introduce the audience into the hazy trance so similar to some of the more atmospheric-playing post-rock bands.

Accoridng to the artists, the album was created from a total chaos multiplied by changes in the band's line-up and I'd say you can notice that. The compositions somewhat lack order and seem to simply be the manifestation of the band's energy. This, together with the coherent, very dark texture of their sound makes a curious mixture that is first of all aimed at creating the atmosphere, but also, another quote from the artists, at making "an attempt to map our flaws and turn them into strengths, to make our misalignment with the world into a language of its own". Does it work? Of course it does.

II costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Liminal

Country: Switzerland

Genre: dark rock

Label: Humus Records

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