Category: post rock

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Brighton’s The Fuchsias Share Dynamic “Elephante”

Brighton UK-based ambient music/post rock duo The Fuchsias — Bobby Fage and Stephen Ingham — can trace their origins back almost 20 years: Fage and Ingham played together in a now-defunct ambient collective that played in venues across Brighton, as well as The Big Chill Festival and Beautiful Days Festival. Ingham went on to tour with Dark Horses for over a decade. Fage worked on several songs on Towards Nova Zembla’s 2005 full-length debut, and did compositional work for installation artist Sean Kubsia’s Mysteres des Memoires and Recall, which displayed his fascination with utilizing experimental methods.

The duo wound up reconnecting over a mutual desire to create new minimalistic material — with live electronic elements. The British duo’s recently released four-track debut EP Isle sees them delving into modular guitar experimentation while simultaneously reflecting their unique tastes and passion for expansive, immersive music.

Isle EP‘s latest single, the expansive and cinematic “Elephante” alternates between glistening and looping guitar lines paired with tweeter and woofer rattling boom bap and ambient sections with twinkling electronics. While being decidedly beat driven, “Elephante” is rooted in the sort of patient, patiently textures of Mogwai, Public Service Broadcasting, and others.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Atsuko Chiba Shares a Cinematic, Mosh Pit Friendly Ripper

With the release of two albums and a couple of EPs, Montreal-based psych outfit Atusko Chiba — Karim Lakhdar (guitar, vocals, synthesizer), Kevin McDonald (guitar, synthesizer), David Palumbo (bass guitar, vocals), Anthony Piazza (drums) and Erik Schafhauser (guitar, synthesizer) — have developed and honed a reputation for crafting a cohesive and hypnotic blend of post-rock, prog rock and krautrock paired with offbeat, subversive songwriting. 

The members of Atsuko Chiba pair their unique brand of experimental rock with video and light installations trigged in real time by the band, creating an immersive multimedia, multi-sensorial environment. Over the past few years, the band has toured across Canada, the States and Europe, sharing stages with  . . . And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Big Business, Duchess Says, King Buffalo, and others. 

Atsuko Chiba’s highly-anticipated third album, Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing is slated for a January 20, 2023 release through Montreal-based purveyors of all things psychedelia, Mothland. The album reportedly finds the Canadian quintet crafting a collection of drone-driven yet bombastic material that may draw comparisons to the likes of The Mars Volta, Beak>and Spirit of the Beehive among others. 

“As opposed to our last album, which was about introspection, spacetime and the personal journey, the themes explored on this new album are related to our environment and our reaction to it,” the members of Atsuko Chiba explain. “Though not meant to be strictly political, our references stem from highly politicized movements and ideas. Division and group ideology are heavily explored. A prime example is the weaponization of vocabulary used to distract, displace and alienate us, forcing us to pick sides on every front. Our lyrics also strongly denote our innate love for all living things, encompassing a hopeful, if somewhat violent, plea for change.”

Earlier this year, I wrote about the album’s expansive, slow-burning A Storm in Heaven-meets-Dark Side of the Moon-like “Seeds.” Clocking in at 7:45, the track is centered around lush, glistening synths, swirling guitar riffs, tweeter and woofer rattling boom bap-like drumming paired with heavily distorted vocal harmonies. The single also features a gorgeous contribution from Montreal-based string quartet Quatuor Esca, who perform an arrangement by Gabriel Desjardins. While possessing a sprawling, widescreen atmosphere, “Seeds” evokes a creeping sense of impending uncertainty and doom but with the tacit understanding that perhaps not all is lost — at least not yet. 

Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing‘s second and latest single “Link” is rooted in a chugging and aggressive rhythm section, scorching and blaring alarm-like synths, buzzing poly harmonic guitar lines paired with booming vocals. While sounding a bit like it could have been recorded during the Trace sessions, “Link” is an urgent, mosh pit friendly ripper — with a widescreen, cinematic quality.

“’Link’ is about judgement; how we often tend to judge and belittle others to prop up our own self worth,” the members of Atsuko Chiba explain. “It’s about the lengths we go through to destroy others, while not taking the time to look inside.“

Directed by Laurine Jousserand, the accompanying, animated video for “Link” is mind-bending and trippy visual that sees the protagonist become their own enemy. “We wanted to create an evolving picture based on implicit concepts; a metaphorical narrative through contemplative representation,” Jousserand explains. “The challenge became addressing themes such as sterile conflict or false pretense from an internal point of view while using minimal movement. Lyrics and visual elements immerse us within an accusatory monologue, the enemy taking on the form of the narrator, though their identity bears no importance. Nature becomes increasingly uncomfortable, eventually engulfing the subject, stripping them of their humanity until they are quasi-vegetal and ultimately linked to their doubles. These ghost-like twins are hostile yet passive, mimicking their every movement. The final scene takes the rhetoric out of its intimate and personal confines, giving it different identities, expressing a general state of being, a shared reality.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JAMBINAI Teams Up with K Pop Legend swja on a Brooding and Forceful Ripper

South Korean outfit JAMBINAI — currently founding (and core) trio Bongi Kim (haegum — a Korean fiddle-like instrument), Ilwoo Lee (guitar and piri — a Korean flute, made of bamboo) and Eun Young Sim (geomungo, a Korean zither). Jaehyuk Choi (drums) and B.K. Yu (bass) — can trace its origins tow hen its founding trio met while studying traditional music at Korea National University of Arts. Kim, Lee and Sim bounded over a mutual desire to present traditional music in a new way, “to communicate with the ordinary person, who doesn’t listen to traditional Korean music,” Ilwoo Lee, JAMBINAI’s principal composer and songwriter explained in press notes.

JAMBINAI’s approach manages to eschew several generations of Korean modernists and post-modernists and leans much closer to Western styles with Korean instrumentation — with their sound drawing from Western classical music, jazz, jazz fusion, post rock, prog rock and experimental rock. The then-trio further established their unique headbanging take on traditional Korean music with 2010’s self-tiled debut EP and 2012’s full-length debut, Differance.

While their sound and approach does manage to shock Korean audiences, the band has seen critical and commercial success: Differance was nominated for Best Crossover Album and Best Jazz and Crossover Performance at the 2013 South Korean Music Awards, and won Best Crossover Album. The band used the album’s success as a springboard for several critically applauded, international tours as a quintet.

2016’s Hermitage was released through Bella Union Records, The album featured “They Keep Silence,” a song that sonically brought  Tool and Ministry to mind while tapping into a seemingly universal feeling of anger and isolation — especially those, who are growing both impatient and suspicious of the forces that are influencing and controlling their daily lives.

For the South Korean post rock outfit, the past couple of years have been the best of times and the worst of times: The outfit released their third album ONDA back in 2019. Just a few months later, in February 2020, the quintet won Best Rock Album and Best Rock song for album track “ONDA” at that year’s South Korean Music Awards. Of course, the pandemic struck in March 2020, throwing a monkey wrench into both people’s lives and their plans.

The band’s latest EP Apparition is slated for a Friday release through Bella Union. The EP reportedly captures the depth and range of emotions that the band has felt and experienced over the past couple of years, from anxious lockdowns and the disappointment of thwarted plans, to the thrill of renewed creativity, hunger and hope. “After ONDA we saw 2020 as a new opportunity to work on a bigger stage,” JAMBINAI’s Ilwoo Lee recalls. “I personally wanted to release a new album and tour to exhaust the energy of ONDA and find new inspiration, but it didn’t work out that way. We didn’t find enough energy to make a full album yet, so for now we are releasing four songs.”

The EP’s title is derived from Lee’s perception of the band,. “JAMBINAI have been making intense music for an intense group of devotees in invisible places,” he says. “Overall, I have tried to express a message of comfort to everyone living in a difficult time due to the pandemic and what’s going on in the world.” 

The EP reveals a band that’s more energized than ever, making up for lost time and momentum: Their appearance at the Seoul 2018 Winter Olympic Games Closing Ceremony set up the forward momentum that produced ONDA. Their South Korean Music Awards wins upped the ante for a prospective follow-up. Even after winning the Asia category at the 2020 Songlines Awards, they felt that the thrill and force of new music and performance would be the only thing to really count. By the end of 2021, they had started to record the material that would become Apparition — but they managed to be be busy: They released four acoustic performances. They collaborated with Soojung Baek’s boutique Craft Codes to combine two of her seats “that seemed to match our music the best,” Lee says.

The urge to create has pushed the band’s core trio creative energies into new territories: In September, JAMBINAI’s Lee worked as a metro of the traditional Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra for performances in Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia and the Czech Republic. Just last month, he collaborated with PAKK at London’s K-Music Festival. And he wrote the music for the first season of the BBC’S Korean-set crime podcast, The Lazarus Heist. The band’s Kim and Sim co-wrote the music for a modern art piece in South Korea’s National Museum of Contemporary and Modern Arts. Sim also released a solo album back in 2019 — and wrote and performed the music for a piece by choreographer Jinyeob Cha earlier this year, Kim also currently DJs for a Korean traditional music broadcast.

The band’s core trio, along with Choi and Yu will embark on a tour in may 2023, “and when there’s an empty space, I want to make a new album,” Lee adds.

Apparition‘s latest single “from the place been erased,” features guest vocals from K Pop legend swja (also known as sunwoojunga), who has worked with 2NE1, Blackpink and a little known outfit by the name of something like BTS. swja’s ethereal and achingly delicate delivery i paired with a brooding and expansive arrangement that alternates between dreamy and atmospheric passages and stormy power chord-driven sections that rip hard. Sonically, the song is a seamless synthesis of trip-hop, shoegaze, doom metal and post rock — with Western and Korean instrumentation that captures intense emotion: unease, frustration, anger and hope within a turn of a phrase.

“I thought swja’s voice would go well with our music,” says Lee, “so I asked her for help. I am honoured that she willingly participated. Despite our heavy and strong sound, she understood its inner emotions.”

Directed by Jinho Park, the accompanying video features swja and the members of JAMBINAI performing the song together in intimately shot footage paired with some gorgeous and trippy lighting.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montreal’s Atsuko Chiba Shares Sprawling and Cinematic “Seeds”

Through the release of two albums and a couple of EPs, Montreal-based psych outfit Atusko Chiba — Karim Lakhdar (guitar, vocals, synthesizer), Kevin McDonald (guitar, synthesizer), David Palumbo (bass guitar, vocals), Anthony Piazza (drums) and Erik Schafhauser (guitar, synthesizer) — have developed and honed a reputation for crafting a genre-defying sound with a cohesive and hypnotic blend of post-rock, prog rock and krautrock paired with offbeat, subversive songwriting.

Live, the Montreal psych outfit pairs their unique brand of experimental rock with video and light installations trigged in real time by the band, creating an immersive multimedia, multi-sensorial environment. Over the past handful of years, the band has toured across Canada, the States and Europe, sharing states with the likes of . . . And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, Big Business, Duchess Says, King Buffalo, and others.

Atusko Chiba’s highly-anticipated third album Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing is slated for a January 20, 2023 release through Montreal-based purveyors of psychedelia, Mothland. The album reportedly finds the Canadian quintet crafting a collection of drone-driven yet bombastic material that may draw comparisons to the likes of The Mars Volta, Beak> and Spirit of the Beehive among others.

“As opposed to our last album, which was about introspection, spacetime and the personal journey, the themes explored on this new album are related to our environment and our reaction to it,” the members of Atsuko Chiba explain. “Though not meant to be strictly political, our references stem from highly politicized movements and ideas. Division and group ideology are heavily explored. A prime example is the weaponization of vocabulary used to distract, displace and alienate us, forcing us to pick sides on every front. Our lyrics also strongly denote our innate love for all living things, encompassing a hopeful, if somewhat violent, plea for change.”

Clocking in at 7:45, Water, It Feels Like It’s Growing‘s first single “Seeds” is a slow-burning and brooding bit of A Storm in Heaven-meets-Dark Side of the Moon-like psychedelia centered around lush, glistening synths, swirling guitar riffs, tweeter and woofer rattling boom bap-like drumming paired heavily distorted vocal harmonies. The single also features a gorgeous contribution from Montreal-based string quartet Quatuor Esca, who perform an arrangement by Gabriel Desjardins. While possessing a sprawling, widescreen atmosphere, “Seeds” evokes a creeping sense of impending uncertainty and doom but with the tacit understanding that perhaps not all is lost — at least not yet.

Directed by longtime friend and collaborator Rodrigo Sergio, the accompanying video for “Seeds” shows performing artist and dancer Jade Maya embodying the song’s themes through physical movements that are subtle or violent in a variety of environments — both natural and man-made.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Kwoon Shares Cinematic “King of Sea”

Kwoon is the musical project of a mysterious French musician, producer and composer, only known as Sandy. With his full-length debut, 2006’s Tales & Dreams, Sandy quickly established his project’s sound and aesthetic — a dreamy take on post-rock and prog rock, that seemed inspired by Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky, and Pink Floyd. 

Sandy followed that up with two more albums — 2009’s When the flowers were singing and 2011’s The Guillotine Show, which was released through Fin de Siécle.

Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of last year, you may recall that Sandy released a series of live performances filmed in some mesmerizing locations including a cliff on the island of Lanzarote, the Tévennec Lighthouse, on the stormy Breton sea, where he performed an early version of his latest single “King of Sea,” and Quiberon Airport, in Quiberon, France for the slow-burning and shoegazey “Stratofear.”

Kwoon’s latest single “King of Sea” continues a run of slow-burning and gorgeously, cinematic material. Featuring an orchestral arrangement consisting of twinkling and looping piano, dramatic drumming and percussion, soaring backing vocals and textured layers of guitars drenched in delay and reverb pedal paired with Sandy’s David Gilmour-like vocals, “King of the Sea” sounds as though it could be drawing from The Wall-era Pink Floyd (think of “The Trial”) or A Momentary Lapse of Reason-era Pink Floyd.

Written while staying in the Tévennec Lighthouse in Finistere, France on the Breton Sea, the song is inspired by the lighthouse, which has a lengthy and terrifying reputation among sailors for strange and terrible phenomena that have happened around the site. In fact, many sailors have referred to the lighthouse and island as “the gateway to hell.”

Directed by Stéphane Berla, the hauntingly gorgeous, stop-motion animated visual for “King of the Sea” is set in Brittany in the 1800s and follows the life of a Breton sailor, who leaves his young family and drowns in the stormy sea. Once drowned, the man comes across strange, otherworldly phenomena.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Single: Mysterious Act WORLD GOVERNMENT Shares a Brooding, New Single

WORLD GOVERNMENT is a mysterious post rock outfit that formed back in 2007. After several releases and numerous live shows, the members of WORLD GOVERNMENT focused on a writing and recording a full-length album.  As the story goes, while working on their album, they felt into the trap of perfectionism and as a result, the band wound up secluding themselves for a period of several years.

However, that period resulted in a batch of new material including “Rain, drops,” a slow-burning and meditative composition that evokes rainy Spring afternoons as I wrote earlier this year. The mysterious act’s latest single “Lucky” is part of a maxi-single EP that will feature variations of the same song — as though they came from parallel universes.

“Lucky” is a sparse and meditative song centered around looping guitar, buzzing bass synths, twinkling and arpeggiated melodic synths and skittering beats paired with plaintive vocals dripping with a bit of emotional ambiguity and irony. While managing to nod at Depeche Mode‘s “Enjoy the Silence,” the members of WORLD GOVERNMENT explain that he song is “a bit cautious, a bit sad, a bit sarcastic” and “is about being in the moment, feeling ‘now.’ We are finally out of our comfort zone. What’s next?”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Yoo Doo Right Shares Mind-Bending and Epic “Feet Together, Face Up, On The Front Lawn”

Deriving their name from one of Can‘s best known — and perhaps most covered — songs, Montreal-based Yoo Doo Right — Justin Cober (guitar, synths, vocals), Charles Masson (bass) and John Talbot (drums, percussion) — have developed an improvisational-based approach that features elements of krautrock, shoegaze, post-rock and psych rock that the band has described as “a car crash in slow motion.” 

Since their formation, You Doo Right have become a highly in-demand live act that has toured across North America, including making a run of the festival circuit with stops at Levitation, M for Montreal, Sled Island, Pop Montreal and New Colossus Festival earlier this year. Back in 2018, the Montreal-based experimental outfit was the main support act for Acid Mothers Temple‘s North American tour that year — and as a result, they’ve shared stages with the likes of DIIV, A Place to Bury Strangers, Wooden Shjips, Kikagkiu Moyo, FACS, Frigs, and Jessica Moss and several others. 

Their full-length debut, last year’s Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose featured the slow-burning exercise in restraint and unresolved tension, album title track “Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose,” and the forceful and trippy motorik groove-driven “Presto Presto, Bella’s Dream.”

Yoo Doo Right’s highly-anticipated sophomore album A Murmur, Boundless To The East is slated for a June 10, 2022 through Mothland. After premiering the album’s material for hometown fans at Société des arts technologiques de Montréal, the band knew that there was only one way to record the album — live off-the-floor at Hotel2Tango. The band recruited acclaimed producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh to assist them in crafting their vision.

A Murmur, Boundless To The East‘s first single, the epic “Feet Together, Face Up, On The Front Lawn,” features a lengthy introductory section featuring oceanic guitar feedback paired with thunderous drumming before morphing into a brief krautrock section featuring oscillating synths, driving rhythms and glistening guitars paired with punchily delivered vocals. The song ends with a lengthy coda of oceanic guitar feedback and thunderous drumming.
The end result manages to be a brooding mix of malevolence and uncanny beauty.

Mackenzie Reid Rostad created an accompanying short film shot with thermal cameras, which gives the entire proceeding a spectral vibe. “We knew we wanted to explore a narrative or continuity with the film and in the end, this happened to be that of enclosure. It’s both a product and a process of something that itself has no end,” Reid explains. “The track’s title and those for the rest of the album really echo this general desire to transcend this something as manifest in the proliferating enclosures of the visible (fences, power lines, highways, etc.) and non-visible (frontiers, thresholds) world. The entire video was shot with a thermal camera and beyond the materiality of the image (light/heat and visible/non-visible), its very existence is a fragment of the latter, as this kind of technology has been developed and heavily deployed in the service of private property and national frontiers. These are the kinds of things I’m thinking about when listening to Yoo Doo Right anyhow and again this something, of which enclosure is an aspect, is a process. I started with this somewhere in the back of my mind and the music pulled this process out of everything that followed.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: WORLD GOVERNMENT Shares Contemplative “Rain, Drops”

WORLD GOVERNMENT is a mysterious post rock outfit that formed back in 2007. After several releases and numerous live shows, the members of WORLD GOVERNMENT focused on a writing and recording a full-length album.

While working on their full-length debut, they fell into the trap of perfectionism and the band wound up secluding themselves for a period of several years. However, that period did result in new material — including the slow-burning and meditative composition “Rain, drops.” Centered around glistening guitars and a sinuous bass line, brief bursts of clink and clatter and wobbling electronics “Rain, drops” manages to evoke rainy Spring afternoons — to the point that you can almost hear the drops hitting hitting the windows or your windshield . . .

The accompanying video wasn’t planned — but it manages to evoke the meditative mood of the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Mysterious French Artist Kwoon Launches Guitar into Space

Kwoon is the musical project of a rather mysterious French musician, producer and composer, only known as Sandy. And with his full-length debut, 2006’s Tales & Dreams, the mysterious mastermind behind Kwoon quickly established the project’s sound — a dreamy take on post-rock and prog rock, seemingly inspired by the likes of Sigur Ros, Explosions in the Sky, and even Pink Floyd.

Sandy followed up with 2009’s When the flowers were singing and 2011’s The Guillotine Show, which was released through Fin de Siécle. Over the past year or so, the mysterious French producer and musician has released a series of live performances shot in some truly mesmerizing locations including a vocal and cliff on the island of Lanzarote, the Tévennec Lighthouse, near the stormy Breton sea.

Kwoon’s latest single, “Stratofear” continues a run of dreamy, slow-burning and cinematic material. But in this case, with the composition centered around shimmering, pedal effected guitars, a soaring string sample and skittering beats. Interestingly, “Stratosfear to my ears sees the mysterious French artist meshing elements of textured A Storm in Heaven-like shoegaze, neo-classical and Sigur Ros and Collapse Under the Empire-like post rock.

Shot at Quiberon Airport, in Quiberon, France, the live footage features the mysterious artist performing the composition on their airfield, next to a Wright Brothers-era airplane. Just behind him, a balloon with a guitar attached is launched into space. And as he performs the song, we see footage from the perspective of the newly-launched space guitar. It’s gorgeous, trippy and badass.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: French Act Full Moon Little House Releases a Lysergic Visual for Atmospheric “GAIA”

After spending several years in a number of alternative rock and indie rock bands, French multi-instrumentalist and producer, Kévin Navizet steps out into the limelight as a solo artist, with his solo recording project Full Moon Little House, which specializes in what he describes as alternative indie rock/post rock.

Earlier this year, Navizet released the first part of his full-length debut, a five-song, mini digital album titled June — before releasing the full album later this year. Clocking in at a little over 5:50, Navizet’s sixth Full Moon Little House single “GAIA” is a slow-burning track feauring layers of jangling, shimmering and pedal effected guitars, towering feedback and rolling drumming that slowly builds up in intensity before gently fading out. The song’s patient, painterly quality reminds me quite a bit of Mogwai, Remember Remember and others while being remarkably cinematic.

Navizet’s gorgeous self-directed and self- made video features animation of translucent jellyfish seemingly dancing to the song in the deepest darks of the ocean. Through doubling and tripling the jellyfish, the video takes on a hallucinogenic and kaleidoscopic vibe.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: VAR at Orgelsmidjan

Acclaimed Reykjavik-based post-rock collective VAR was founded in 2013 as a solo recording project of its founding member and creative mastermind Júliús Óttar Björgvinsson (vocals, guitar and piano). But shortly after he started the project, Björgvinsson began to feel as though his vision couldn’t be fully realized without assistance. So, he recruited those who were the closest to him — his wife Myrra Rós (synths, vocals), his brother Egil Björgvinsson (bass) and his friends Arnór Jónasson (guitar) and Adrni Freyr Þorgeirsson (drums). That lineup wrote and recorded the Vetur EP — and in the subsequent years after its release, the band managed to built up a fiercely loyal fanbase through relentless touring. 

After the release of the Vetur EP, the band went through a series of lineup changes: Ròs left the band as a result of competing professional and personal responsibilities and Sigurður Ingi Einarsson (drums) replaced Freyr Þorgeirsson. A smaller lineup forced a thorough reimagining and reworking of their sound — and the result was last year’s The Never Ending Year, which may arguably be the most ambitious album of their growing catalog.

Much like countless acts across the globe, the pandemic put the Icelandic act’s plans to support their new album with a tour on an indefinite hold. “After releasing an album and having no chance to play it live, we felt like we had to do something to give people at least a little taste of us playing these songs live,” VAR’s Júlíus Óttar Björgvinsson (vocals/guitar/keys) says in press notes. “VAR has always been about playing live and we always give everything we have to make the tension between us and the audience both peaceful and powerful. But since we could not play it live for people, we decided to make these live videos of us playing the songs at the organ workshop where we practice. We got our producer Eiður to do the sound for the videos and when he sent us the audio files Arnór brought that idea of releasing a live EP, because people had been asking us to do so. We were happy with the sound Eiður got from the session and how far it is from how the album sounds. It’s powerful, it’s raw and it’s honest. And that is VAR.”

The acclaimed Icelandic act recently released the four-song  Live at Orgelsmidjan EP, which was recorded at the band’s practice space, which also manages to be the country’s only pipe organ workshop. To celebrate the release of the EP, the band released live footage of the session, which manages to accurately capture the band’s intimate yet enormous sound paired with heart on sleeve lyricism. Starting off with the gorgeous, organ and guitar-led meditation “By The Ocean,” the EP quickly picks up the pace with the enormous and rousingly anthemic “Where to Find You,” which finds the band meshing elements of shoegaze, alt rock, arena rock and post rock. “Moments” is a slow-burning and delicate track centered around shimmering guitars with dramatic drumming and Júliús Óttar Björgvinsson’s achingly plaintive vocals that gradually becomes an enormous, arena rock friendly, towering ripper. The EP’s last single “Highlands” is centered around a classic alt rock sound structure — quiet verses with atmospheric guitars and synths and loud choruses with towering power chords.

The accompanying live footage manages to be split into intimately shot footage of the band performing the material or heading to their rehearsal space to play and some incredibly cinematic and awe-inspiring footage of their beautiful homeland. The footage seems to suggest that their surroundings have a direct impact on their sound.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Live Footage: Var Performs “Where To Find You” at Orgelsmidjan

VAR is an acclaimed Reykjavik-based post-rock collective that was founded in 2013 as the solo recording project of its founding member and creative mastermind Júliús Óttar Björgvinsson(vocals, guitar and piano). But shortly after the project’s founding, Björgvinsson felt as though his vision couldn’t be fully realized without additional help. So, he recruited those, who were the closest to him — his wife Myrra Rós (synths, vocals), his brother Egil Björgvinsson (bass) and his friends Arnór Jónasson (guitar) and Adrni Freyr Þorgeirsson (drums). That lineup wrote and recorded the Vetur EP — and in the subsequent years after its release, the band managed to built up a fiercely loyal fanbase through relentless touring.

The band went through a series of lineup changes after the release of Vetur EP: Ròs left the band as a result of competing professional and personal responsibilities and Sigurður Ingi Einarsson (drums) replaced Freyr. A smaller lineup necessitated a reimagining and reworking of the sound, which resulted in last year’s The Never Ending Year, arguably the most ambitious album of their growing catalog.

Much like countless acts across the world, the pandemic put the acclaimed Icelandic act’s tour plans on hold indefinitely. “After releasing an album and having no chance to play it live, we felt like we had to do something to give people at least a little taste of us playing these songs live,” VAR’s Júlíus Óttar Björgvinsson (vocals/guitar/keys) says in press notes. “VAR has always been about playing live and we always give everything we have to make the tension between us and the audience both peaceful and powerful. But since we could not play it live for people, we decided to make these live videos of us playing the songs at the organ workshop where we practice. We got our producer Eiður to do the sound for the videos and when he sent us the audio files Arnór brought that idea of releasing a live EP, because people had been asking us to do so. We were happy with the sound Eiður got from the session and how far it is from how the album sounds. It’s powerful, it’s raw and it’s honest. And that is VAR.”

The Icelandic band’s latest effort, the soon-to-be released four song Live at Orgelsmidjan EP, was recorded at the their practice space, which also serves was their homeland’s only pipe organ workshop. The EP’s latest single “Where To Find You” further establishes their sound, which — to my ears, at least — is a seamless synthesis of atmospheric shoegaze, classic alt rock and arena rock paired with heart-on-sleeve lyricism. But interestingly, because of its unfussy, you-are-there production, the song is imbued with the raw and urgent power of a live performance. And as a result, it gives the material an added emotional punch.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: French Post-Rock Trio Under Old Trees Release Cinematically Shot Live Session for Brooding “Crossed Moon”

With the release of their first two EPs. 2017’s self-titled effort and last year’s No Mist In This Place, the Besançon, France-based post-rock instrumental trio Under Old Trees features members with disparate musical backgrounds. And since their formation, the French post rock trio have developed and honed a sound inspired by Russian Circles, Red Sparowes and Explosions in the Sky.

The band’s third EP Kelo was released earlier this year, and the EP’s latest single “Crossed Moon” continues a run of brooding and cinematic material centered around an expansive song structure featuring a French horn-led intro, followed by shimmering guitars, a propulsive bass line and skittering, hi-hat led four-on-the-floor. Interestingly, the composition alternates between gorgeous and brooding melodic sections and headbanging hardness in a way that reminds me of German instrumental act Collapse Under the Empire.

The members of the French post rock trio released a cinematically shot live session of “Crossed Moon” in the French woods — with the band literally being under old trees.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: French act heklAa releases a Cinematic and Brooding New Single

Sébastien Touraton is a French composer and pianist, who has begun to receive attention with his solo post-rock/post classical recording project heklAa. Earlier this year, Touraton released his latest album Pieces of You, Vol. 2: The Voices Work, an album of work centered around piano and choir.

“The Scent of Our Memories,” the brooding and cinematic, fourth single off Touraton’s latest heklAa album features twinkling and arpeggiated piano figures paired with a soaring and expressive chorus. Sonically, the track is centered around the sort of plaintive yearning that recalls Sigur Rōs.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Toronto’s Gillian Stone Releases a Psychedelic Visual for Introspective New Single

Gillian Stone is a Vancouver Island-born, Toronto-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, who has collaborated on projects by FORCES’ Alli Sunshine, The Fern Tips, Völur and Althea Thauberger — and she’s appeared in music videos for Clear Mortifee, Robert DeLong, Alli Sunshine and Juno Award nominate Tara Kannangara. As a solo artist, Stone’s work uses vulnerability as a way to create a safe space to explore the dichotomy of beauty and discomfort, thematically touching on recovery, the juxtaposition of femininity and imperfection, turbulent feelings and recovery.

Heavily influenced by her background in jazz and ethnomusicology, Stone has managed to have a rather varied creative and professional life: Fascinated by her Icelandic heritage, Stone explored and studied the popular music of Iceland and the icelandic Diaspora in Canada as part of her graduate work in ethnomusicology. The Vancouver-born, Toronto-based artist has studied Javanese and Balinese gamelan; performed with Russell Hartenberger and NEXUS (the principal percussionists of the Steve Reich ensemble) and with Brazilian cavaquinho virtuoso Henrique Cazes. Her upbringing on Vancouver Island led her to Coast Salish hip-hop and the Cascadian bioregion scene. Overall, Stone uses an interdisciplinary approach to explore disparate genres to produce a singular sound.

Stone’s latest single is the atmospheric and dramatic, Michael Peter Olsen-co-produced “Bridges.” Centered around strummed guitar strummed guitar, dramatic drumming and Stone’s achingly vulnerable vocals, the PJ Harvey and Shana Falana-like “Bridges” finds the Vancouver-born, Toronto-based artist telling a story of dissolution, shame and self-flagellation with a bold and unvarnished honesty. “‘Bridges’ is the soundscape of recovery,” Stone says in press notes. “I wrote this song in 2009 after a summer of self-imposed turbulence. I don’t remember exactly when or how I wrote, but it stayed with me and became predictive. For over a decade, I’ve returned to it as a space to a safely express shame. Now it’s morphing into a reminder, a call for self-temperance. I’m still discovering what it means.”

Stone goes on to add the song was co-produced by Micheal Peter Olsen during a cold winter in Olsen’s Toronto-based studio Uncomfortable Silence. “‘Bridges’ follows a journey of dysregulated emotions exacerbated by alcohol abuse,” Stone says. “The e-cello movement is meant to evoke the feeling of losing one’s mind. This is a post=rock night song that ends with a promise of the sun.”

Directed by Emily Harrison, the recently released video for “Bridges” features Stone in the woods and uses mirrors and kaleidoscopic effects to create something both trippy yet introspective. Harrison calls the video “a psychedelic dream inspired by French New Wave film.”