Din of Celestial Birds - Takeoffs & Landings (2026)

Three years after their highly appreciated debut album, the post-rock society is thrilled to receive a sophomore release from the Leeds-based outfit Din of Celestial Birds. They artists are proud about their fast and energetic, but also meaningful instrumental music. And rightly so, as the new album follows the (quick) steps of its predecessor.

As the title suggests, the album is "all about adventure, travel, and the journey of life" with everything that follows: the challenges, the failures but also the every day victories. Judging by the pace of most of the compositions, the artists have a similar feeling as I do: life runs forward so fucking fast. The guitar melodies reflect that very well, at least in most parts. The guitar melodies are the focus point for the band which goes very well with the very much genre-specific ways of employing the narrative and the emotional side of music.

The downside of the album, for me, is fewer moments devoted to atmosphere-building. The balance is shifted certainly towards the catchy and the dance-inducing side. Which has to be awesome at the live gigs too. I'm saying that because in my books this is usually a hard pass for me, but in this case, I feel like it works very well. I'd love to see those guys live at one point.

Takeoffs & Landings costs 10.5 EUR (9 GBP).

Check: Second Star To The Right, and Straight On 'Til Morning

Country: UK

Genre: guitar post-rock

Label: Big Scary Monsters

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Drawing Hills - Lueurs (2026)

I can't believe I already posted about the French band of Drawing Hills... almost 10 years ago. This reminds me that very, very soon, this blog will have its very significant birthday. But this can wait as the short EP released in June and filled to the brim with quality post-rock is worth a story of its own.

Since 2017, the band released only 3 EPs so it's not the most fruitful music career I've seen. HOWEVER, for a small and relatively unknown band, the quality of the music they create is staggering. I love when guitar post-rock finds this balance between being catchy and melodic and noisy and overwhelming. And Lueurs showcases just that: the guitars play blissful melodies only to become aggressively loud and math-rock-like random (in my favourite track here, Inferno). This doesn't mean that there is no continuity here as the whole album feels very well-thought-through and coherently atmospheric.

So the EP may be short, but there is A LOT going on from the beginning to the finish. I just wish the Frenchmen won't wait another 4 years with another three tracks. It's time for an LP I think.

Lueurs costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Inferno

Country: France

Genre: guitar post-rock

Drawing Hills - Bunch of Bushes (2017)

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The Dreamtoday - We Won't Survive the Comet (2026)

Hailing from Pennsylvania, The Dreamtoday brings us some of noisy and coarse-sounding shoegaze, a subgenre that doesn't always work right, but this time it certainly does. They released their second album called We Won't Survive the Comet and it's such an interesting read (I'd say if that was a book)!

A second album or "a story of delusional grandeur and apocalyptic bliss" as they advertise it. And I'm kinda perplexed by the description. If anything, I'd say the sound is more garage-like or small-stage-big-party-esque than equipped with grandeur. As well as bringing the crunchy sounds than the blissful, synth-heavy shoegaze. I was hesitant to call it grunge as I never know what it means exactly, but I see the band themselves use this tag so, yeah, it's grungey shoegaze. Grugaze. 

I particularly like when the band tries adding something else to the slate like when the soothing vocals finally give up lighting up the compositions and get overwhelmed by the noisy guitar sounds as it is the case in Crystal Sky or in my favourite Our Beacon. Or the sort of an interludium but also kinda a cool and dreamy song in through fog. Or the wild Saxophone appearing on Breathe. There is a lot going on in here, probably just as it would be in the final moments before the not surviving the comet situation. Oh, also, the vocalist's called Violet Nowak so cheers to my fellow Polish person!

We Won't Survive the Comet costs 9.99 USD.

Check: Our Beacon

Country: Massachusetts, US

Genre: grugaze (grungey shoegaze)

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Arvid Holst - Fjer (2026)

Arvid Holst comes from Denmark and brings with him the most beautiful soundscapes. His new EP called Fjer is built on the slow and calm sounds of piano keys. But there is something more in those compositions, something just barely audible, yet quite profound.

I love when a good neoclassical work has some electronica hidden somewhere in the backgrounds. Holst chose the extreme version: the electronic additions are really barely audible, sitting somewhere in the background but still influencing the listeners like some sort of subliminal messages aimed at the audience to make their lives slightly more special. The 6 short compositions are subtle and calm, there is no place for hurry or releasing an overflow of energy. This is music for quiet relaxations, but one with a hint of mystery and darkness. 

Fjer costs 4 EUR (6 CAD).

Check: Frigear

Country: Denmark

Genre: piano soundscapes

Label: Moderna Records

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Arches - 4 (2026)

So it seems that this blog can hardly exist without some fantastic discovery from Hong Kong these days. After David Boring and Lucid Express, it's time for the debut album (of course titled 4, duh!) album from the young people of Arches. Dream pop, shoegaze and some very East Asian vibes make some great work here.

The band plays with the whispering vocals and noisy guitars balance so well, I can't believe this is only their first LP. And by writing whispering, I really mean it. It's not a slightly dreamy pop vocal, it's very dream pop-like... yeah, whispering. I love it. And somehow the vocals don't get overwhelmed by the energetic guitars (even if they are not particularly wall-of-sound-esque, they can be pretty loud). But coming back to the silence/noise juxtaposition, I love when a band stops the guitar machine suddenly so the silence sounds more poignantly and, in a very Nothing-esque way, Arches do that a lot, Drowning or Hate are great examples on 4.

4 costs 9 USD.

Check: Drowning

Country: Hong Kong

Genre: dreamy shoegaze

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Blueneck - Moonlighting (2026)

"10 years in the making, forged through chaos, illness and persistence", yes, Blueneck's new album is gonna be the second of the comebacks after a decade since the last album was released this week. Possible one of the albums I'd waited the most this year as The Outpost was really a highlight of 2016. The now-duo overcame the challenges and finally gave us their 8th album and I can safely say that it lived up to the hype.

Heavier dependency on the electronic sounds, come back after years, changes in the line-up. Some time ago Piano Magic came back as Theory of Ghosts and I can hear some similarities in what is happening to Blueneck right now. The sound is slightly different, but the core is there: just as it was on The Outpost and before, the British artist are capable of creating phenomenal atmosphere sitting somewhere between slowcore, post-rock and art pop styles. Based on the beautiful vocals and sad lyrics, formed with synthetic beats and electronica and finally underlined with the guitar noise finishes, most of the compositions on Moonlighting follow the pattern and it works like a gem.

Return to Cadiz ends with hypnotic guitar-focused section that makes you transcendent yourself for a while, Goliath charms with its melodies, but my favourite piece here has to be the title song, Moonlighting. The vocals and the piano keys lead through the first part of the track and its cosy ambiance only to be slowly transformed into a beautifully chaotic mix of sounds and back into an atmospheric ballad. This is going to be one of the most important albums of the year for me.

Moonlighting costs 11 EUR (9 GBP).

Check: Moonlighting 

Country: UK

Genre: electronic slowcore

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Downfall of Nur - And the Firmament will Burn to Quench the Pain of this Earth (2026)

There's been some meaningful comebacks recently and so it happens that all of them came back after a decade of hiatus. And Antonio Sanna's project is no different here. It'd been already 10 years since the last album signed by Downfall of Nur, EP with Selvans was released. The Italian artist currently living in Argentina brought back his music that is located somewhere between instrumental ambient and black metal and made it worth waiting for.

If you take the notion of atmospheric (black) metal and concentrate it over and over again, you'll get Downfall of Nur's soundscapes. Because this is music that may have came from the realm of angry guitars and powerful screams but there's little that reminds us of the genre's origins at the moment. It's a soundscape. Almost ambient music in a way. The album is long which makes the tracks long, almost all of them being their own wholes, their own albums. Slowly developing, reaching unbelievable places, coming back and again, like a nice evening stroll. It happens that the stroll brings you around hell that our world is turning into, but nevertheless, it's a stroll.

The atmosphere on thsi album is phenomenal. No wonder, as this album treats about the way the suffering and the grief of women shaped the history of humankind. This and the undoubted ties to the Mediterranean culture must bring the recent cinematic mega-production to one's mind, especially that the album "is not a linear or conclusive narrative, but a fragmented ritual space that opens the way to multiple layers of interpretation, where history, mythology, and human mourning converge". Non-linear, huh? Just like a certain American director likes doing stuff. I'm happy to say that And the Firmament will Burn to Quench the Pain of this Earth is my favourite piece of non-linear storytelling set in the Mediterranean world this summer.

And the Firmament will Burn to Quench the Pain of this Earth costs 7 EUR.

Check: Underground Halls of the Oldest Goddess’s Stronghold

Country: Italy/Argentina

Genre: black metal soundscape

Label: Avantgarde Music

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