Jocelyn Packard - Nothing Is Solid (2020)

With the name taken from David Lynch's mythos, the Polish Jocelyn Packard have a little choice but to create mysterious and dark music. The duo's second album is called Nothing Is Solid and contains an interesting blend of ambient and post-rock vibes. This release is already three months old but is so intriguing I can't go past it without posting something on my blog.

The album is said to be a musical type of a diary with the music corresponding to the artist's life experience and gradually "growing out of them". It is expressed with lazy noise poring over form the speakers for long minutes. This guitar ambient with traces of very slow, very climactic post-rock would perfectly fit Twin Peak's darker scenes of its unnerving mystery (Kate Song (Jet Fuel Perfume)!). BUT as it seems, the artists are not very fond of Twin Peaks-oriented similes when describing their music so perhaps let's stop here. Although the noisy psychedelia that in visual form defines Lynch's works, truly lives here in its audio persona. And, of course, there are references to other Lynch-like weird pieces of culture like James Joyce's infamous Finnegans Wake. 

Nothing Is Solid costs 2.5 EUR (10 PLN).

Check: Kate Song (Jet Fuel Perfume)

Country: Poland

Genre: noisy ambient

Label: Opus Elefantum

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Slow Grave - Foam (2021)

Slow Grave is a project revolving around Carlos Rosa, an artist from Puerto Rico, with some interesting, very rough and guitar take on post-rock. This year's Foam is also their debut album and one fans should give a go.

The band's music is definitely guitar-oriented. There's little room for anything else and, as usual for this kind of approach to post-rock, it results in sudden changes of melody and pace and, most importantly, this chaotic energy typical for math-rock artists. The cooperation between guitars results in complicated and complex structures in which every sound has its own place. I'd say the tracks could be longer so there's more time for the compositions to develop but this method with shorter ones also has its charm, a bit more punky and energy-focused in that way.

Although there are also calmer tracks like Morningtide. The range of the band's styles is quite impressive, it's good to have the ability to manage all sorts of guitar moods and I like the most the songs that combine the most of it. Like Red Coast or coming close to post-metal Voyager. And of course the album's perfect ending in Lockne, the track that's... last but one.

Foam costs 10 USD.

Check: Voyager

Country: Puerto Rico

Genre: guitar post-rock

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Radio Supernova - Takaisin (2021)

Finnish "mansegaze," or particularly psychedelic shoegaze, is back with the Tampere-based Radio Supernova releasing their second album with which they prove the psychedelic rock scene is theirs to take it. Takaisin includes at least as good quality music as it was with the band's debut.

This is the kind of colourful shoegaze that preserves the noise music/soothing (but also, paradoxically, punkish) vocals ratio but at the same time is more focused on the psychedelia of the rich music layer, creating a guitar-based maze that engages the audience with ease. It's also a fast album with Tammikuu already setting the pace that is only built on by songs like Väkivaltaa that is simply created to dance to. Even if the dance is wide and chaotic. On the other hand, you can hardly say the music here lacks atmosphere. The guitar sounds create a layer that is impenetrable and thick as hell, and also that combines loudness with melody, especially in the longer tracks like Kadoksiin and in the piano-based noise of Utopia.

The album is a good continuation of the debuting Tähtiin. Same vibes, same atmosphere but at the same time no feeling of repetitiveness. No wonder that the album's title translates to "Again". Also, no wonder, the album's one of the best scoring release of 2021 as far according to Rate Your Music.

Takaisin costs 6 EUR.

Radio Supernova - Tähtiin (2019)

Check: Utopia 

Country: Finland

Genre: psychedelic shoegaze

Label: Soit Se Silti

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Fragile Thoughts - Broken Strings & Empty Hearts (2021)

Last year, Polish band Give Up to Failure released one of the best album's of the year, one filled with genuinely dark and heavy shoegaze. At the beginning of 2021, Krzysztof Mlynczak, the guitarist of the band, showed that he really digs this atmosphere with an EP/single called Broken Strings & Empty Hearts.

The very short album is filled with dark neoclassicism. The piano and violins sounds create an unsettling, though beautiful, atmosphere of sadness and melancholy. It's not a loud music but there's a feeling that it can soon explode (and actually does in Pointless). The super subtle electronica and guitar noises in the backgrounds add up to the music's multidimensional nature but what matters most is the unbelievable dense atmosphere packed in those 10 minutes. The further you go, the more post-rock the music becomes and it's such a good forecast for Mlynczak next works. Hopefully soon.

Broken Strings & Empty Hearts costs whatever you want to pay.

Check: Pointless

Country: Poland

Genre: neoclassical post-rock.

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Zetra - The Wanderer (2020)

Zatra is a post-punk/gazy duo from London who lately released some intriguing stuff. I liked their EP from 2020 but what really caught my attention was... an EP from 2020. Towards the end of the year, they released a themed EP called The Wanderer.

This album was, naturally, written in isolation during the lockdowns, however, its focus is not on this experience but on something quite different: the nature of Christian holidays and their beginnings "when native European gods and traditions were assimilated and appropriated into a festival now celebrated across the world". So we have something about Odin, something about Sol Invictus here and all this sort of jazz. Quite special for this kind of music (sounds like a metal theme to me) - a blend of delicate, pop-like melodic and dreamy at the same time vocals with shoegazy coldwave and noise rock in the backgrounds.

In Hanged God, we can hear fitting long and desolated passages of guitar sounds as well as wavy electronic devices and it's blends into the cold noise rock of the rest of the album. The balance in the form of the angelic vocals (especially in the ballad-like Before I Dissolve) is like light to the music's shadow and fits perfectly the visual side of the project.

The Wanderer costs 2 GBP.

Check: Hanged God

Country: UK

Genre: dreamy noise rock

Label: Death Waltz Recording Company

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Tapes and Topographies - Inoculations (2020)

I almost missed this, but Tapes and Topographies is a moniker of Todd Gautreau a.k.a. Sonogram who for me is better known as the leader of Crushed Stars, a duo responsible for the brilliant album Go Dark, Canaveral from two years ago. Here, within his solo project, he's busy with casting spells with ambient music and he does it very regularly as Inoculations is already his second album in 2020.

It's unbelievable how beautiful Gautreau's music is. The way the subtle, extremely delicate noise goes together with the elements of neoclassicism and soundscape'y vibes is something one can hardly find anywhere but also longs for all the time. It's very, very sad but also quite constant in this sadness as if it was morning about something that happened a long time ago. No bursts of depression but long, peaceful melancholia. I absolutely love it.

Inoculations costs 7 EUR.

Check: The Leaving Feels the Same

Country: Texas, US

Genre: melancholic ambient

Label: DRONARIVM

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Weal - Calm (2021)

"Noise rock noir" from Scandinavia, the Copenhagen-based Weal are debuting with their long-play album now, at the beginning of 2021. The quartet's music balances between indie rock, shoegaze and several other noisy genres and can be admired on Calm.

The base of their material is indie rock but it's not an ordinary one, that's for sure. There's a lot of dirt and noise all over the place with coarse guitars taking the main role from time to time too. But the way the vocals are constructed (also with a guest female artist I assume) makes me think that the main objective was to be melodic and catchy and then to cover it with a thick layer of psychedelic noise. This is well visible in the great single track Night Drive.

I especially like it when the tracks gain momentum and become very noisy, as it is the case in the cleverly entitled (and very metal-like) In Sickness and Hell, in the angelically ethereal Babylon and very post-rocky Silent King. Also, an interesting fact for Polish readers, the band includes two artists called Niedziella Nørgaard so I'm sensing some Polish roots there. Not that it matters but it's a fun fact.

Calm costs 13 USD.

Check: Night Drive

Country: Denmark

Genre: noise rock

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