THE DIARY OF THE MISSED ONE

An album's worth of gently weeping guitar with a doomy, lo-fi atmosphere informed by some of the best post-rock experimenters, The Diary of the Missed One should slot snugly into the collections of confirmed genre fans and offers an unignorable experience to the rest of us.

Still, it is music of a rather monochrome palette, overpouring with layers of electric guitar soundscapery (frequently making me think of Glenn Branca on laudanum) to the exclusion of almost any other sound. You may find that, faced with such axe saturation, the most interesting parts of the album come when the guitar is defocused or used to produce less traditional sounds - the chimeric drum deconstruction concluding By the Music of Autumn Trees and the subsequent horrorphonics are this reviewer's favourite part of the album.

Your acceptance of the album will depend on how fond you are of the simple themes the songs use as foundations, because they are repeated and modestly varied upon a great deal. To this reviewer's ears, Krobak don't jam so much as orchestrate; nevertheless, it's possible to tire of the emphasis on the iteration of such short phrases, and of the prevailing mood of the album, one mostly (in my mind) regretful and funereal, rarely psychedelic.

During the best moments, The Diary of the Missed One compares well with GY!BE and owes a little to Dead Flag Blues, sharing that The Shadows played at half-speed aesthetic; at other glorious times, the album also features startlingly noisy interludes and goodbyes which can both tickle and serve as music to sulk to; overall, despite being let down by its over-long conventional sections, Krobak have made an interesting album for fans of highly suffusive downer music - just perhaps not for those of typical progressive rock.

Good luck to Krobak's future works.