Niechęć - Reckless Things (2025)

I am a person who famously dislike jazz. Sorry. But when I like an album that is very jazzy, if not jazz full stop, it's a clear indication that the album is really good. It's not Ciśnienie whose post-rock noise is structured like jazz, it's jazz music that feels like post-rock and it's enough for me to get really intrigued by the Polish band's fourth ever album.

The band admit their love for improvisation (is there any jazz outfit who don't like it?) but that their sound changes constantly and "balances between fury and melancholy, recently leaning towards trance rhythms and synths". After the first two tracks I was already sold: Nowe płuca (translating to "New Lungs") present a perfect riff (but played on a trumpet, I think) that makes the track an instant hit while Bezdech ("Apnea")'s finish is... just pure post-rock. Sorry to keep coming back to the comparison with the guitar-based genre, but this is where I feel comfortable in. I'm not trying to offend anyone.

Although it is not a norm for me, I prefer the livelier, more energetic fragments of the album. The more self-reflecting parts played with a saxophone (I think) are definitely not my cup of tea. Still though, I am excited by this album more than I could have guessed.

Reckless Things costs 7 EUR (29 PLN). 

Check: Nowe płuca

Country: Poland

Genre: post-rocky jazz

Label: Audio Cave

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Wale Fall - Five (2024)

It's almost five years since this Los Angeles band appeared on the blog with their fourth album. As the title of the new one suggests, I haven't missed any of their releases in the way and it's a good thing as the Americans offer a quality guitar-based post-rock soaked with their own unique style based on the use of brass instruments.

The touch of the brass instruments sound is certainly something that makes the band unique. In fact, the album is opened by El Jinete, a track that revolves around, what I presume is, the traditional Mexican trumpet music. I mean I know it from westerns and Zorro probably, but this is my association, and, if it's correct, I like the fact that the Californian band embraces the region's history and channels it in their music. Unique and coherent. But the band use even more unorthodox instrument, like cello that adds to the atmospheric side of their music.

But the overall vibes on the album are less atmospheric or noisy and more into the melodic nature of instrumental music. In fact, I'd say it's music that sits on the verge of what we consider post-rock and it's a good thing too. This is also strengthen by the act that the musicians also stress how important improvisation is for their creative process, making me think less of post-rock and more of other instrumental-only genres. Regardless, a unique album with great music (and some sense of humour too in some of the track titles). 

Five costs 7 USD.

Whale Fall - It Will Become Itself (2020)

Check: Fjord Lightning

Country: California, US

Genre: melodic post-rock

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Giorgio Fazer - Gdy rozum śpi (2021)

"The third and the best album" by the Warsaw-based duo Mateusz Franczak-Miron Grzegorkiewicz known as Giorgio Fazer, is called Gdy rozum śpi. This is not my assessment, it's what the artists stated on their own. After some impressive experimental music-infused poetry on Gorzki to chleb jest polskość and 2020's Odarci z godności, the duo is back with yet another mark on Polish music.

The artists are known for their poetic expression; they include recited poems all over their music and one could argue that the improvised guitar and electronica sounds around them are only a background, an experimental arrangement to extend the poetry's meaning. This time the poetry is represented by what is called "a mysterious voice on the tape in a found dictaphone", a voice of a man who is clearly delusional and follows some kind of borderline mad conspiracy theories. The voice samples open and close the album. The artists comment that "in the stories we found, we discovered the spirit of our times - the progressive, overwhelming madness" so their goal is to tame it by closing it in the form of music.

It is unnerving, especially that the album's title Gdy rozum śpi translates to the first part of Franciso Goya's masterpiece's title The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. One can only wonder what will eventually happen, in the reality around us as well as in the music while going through the album. The improvised sounds create a calm but psychedelically complex soundscape that is only made more attractive when the dreamy vocals appear and even more poignant when it gets swallowed by industrial noise in Czas decyzji. 

Gdy rozum śpi costs 8 EUR (1000 JPY).

Giorgio Fazer - Gorzki to chleb jest polskość (2017) EN

Check: Czas decyzji

Country: Poland

Genre: psychedelic electronica

Label: mAtter

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FOUDRE! - Future Sabbath (2021)

The French ambient supergroup consisting of the members of several other bands, FOUDRE! come back with their fifth album called Future Sabbath in the attempt to combine the spiritual and occult with the modern and progressive.

The "improvised music [functioning] as a haunting ritual at the confines of the Martian territories of noise, drone and ambient" here is both mesmerizing and unsettling with its industrial drones and spiritual tunes with traces of jazzy vibes and pure noise. It is meant to be a study of "invisible forces that live within us, through a ceremony that brings together occult sciences, forgotten landscapes and the fever of the unconscious" and successes in doing so by inducing a trance-like experience within the audience, making them dance and sob at the same, weird time. The artistic message is further amplified by Faye Formisano, a universal artist who designed the cover art, as unsettling and eerie as the whole thing.

Future Sabbath costs 7 EUR.

Check: Liberation of the Mystics II

Country: France

Genre: industrial improvised soundscape

Label: NAHAL Recordings

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