YUME BITSU

Post-rock is a peculiar genre. It can span many different styles, lengths, and themes, but it always comes across as the embodiment of classical music in the form of rock. It wreaks of pure emotion, developing thoughts and emotions never thought possible to be evoked by simple music alone.

Yume Bitsu's sophomore album, the self-titled Yume Bitsu, is a beautiful amalgamation of sheer bliss and energy. Long, haunting, and focused on a single musical theme, the album soars higher than any other post-rock album, and becomes what I truly believe is an instant classic, the holy grail of all post-rock efforts, even passing greats such as GY!BE and Mogwai.

This Portland-based quartet has the uncanny ability to develop one musical theme over the span of an hour, providing the listener with a voyage incomparable to anything mental or physical. Team Yume opens the record with a hauntingly peaceful synth, drizzled with reverb-laden and dreamy guitar. Slowly but surely, the harmony of simplicity develops, and the listener is sent to a placid, dream-like state, anxiously awaiting the next seconds of what is yet to further embrace the senses. Slowly, everything crescendos, and the final stretch is full of distorted, fuzzy guitars, throbbing percussion, and noisy tape flutters. Yume Bitsu not only encompasses the nuances of post-rock, but dwindles in the ethereal world of space rock, and the influence is found thick within all six tracks. And in no way does this hamper the music; in fact, it adds so much extra texture and vividness that nothing can truly resemble what Yume Bitsu has set out to do.

I Wait For You and Truth are the album's strongest songs, focusing on the aforementioned musical theme; here, we are introduced with singing, albeit not the strongest, but rich in emotion, and dreamingly spewed out in tones that are not of this world. Euphoria is the best word I can muster to explain the feeling these two recordings put in my mind, soul, and body - they take the listener on the same out-of-world experience that Yume Bitsu begins on the very first bemused note.

While Surface I and Surface II are fantastic melodies, they don't quite compare to the rest of the album; sure, everything in a whole is fantastic, but there has to be weak points, and these two tracks certainly don't provide enough merit to prove how amazing the band is.

The album closer, The Frigid, Frigid, Frigid Body of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg, cannot be explained with words. Spanning nearly nineteen minutes, this harsh and gritty piece, soaked in melancholy delays, slowly leads into oddly joyous vocals, and leaves a lasting impression. With everything that Yume Bitsu sets the listener up for in the first five tracks, Dr. T.J. Eckleberg nearly demolishes with such precision and perfection that I have yet to hear in any piece of musical genius.

This world is not all that we are confined to. With music, we soar, and reach places beyond imagination, beyond time, and beyond all physical laws that bind us to this Earth we haphazardly consider a home. Yume Bitsu is not just a fantastic album that's well-developed and absolutely beautiful, it's a gateway to experience more than this meagre life can potentially offer. Journey down the rabbit hole, and embrace the other world we are intertwined with.