Experimental/Post rock Appreciation Threa

i havent really written a post-rock review in a while, hopefully I will get around too it soon, maybe sometime this weekend if im lucky

i'd write a godspeed one but im scared, my opinions always change on their albums

Just something of interest. Was just browsing around and just realised you can stream this post rock album, for those interested. Cannot really remember what it was like other than it was post-rock. I might have another listen to it sometime soon.



Ganger - Hammock style

http://www.bleep.com/?bleep=WIGCD47

is there a way to download the whole thing or is it just stream?

Just thought I would give a local band from home country (AUS). This one is very easily available over here and should be an interesting listen for those into post-rock. Amazingly Australia has a quite healthy scene in regards to post rock.

This Is Your Captain Speaking - Storyboard

Official site:

http://www.thisisyourcaptainspeaking.info/

Some reviews:

future


'Storyboard' review from The Black & White Mag (UK)

Describing a band like This Is Your Captain Speaking can be very difficult, especially when you try to avoid overused terms like "post-rock" or "ambient shoegaze", but I'd rather avoid using those descriptions for this Melbourne, Australia based instrumental band. And not because TIYCS doesn't play post-rock/ambient shoegaze, but rather because their music just doesn't stop there. Storyboard is the bands debut full-length, and was originally released by the band itself. After selling out of the original pressing, UK based Resonant Label reissued this fine masterpiece. The fact that this record is a debut is hard to believe, because the trio effortlessly plays with (equal to or more) passion than Godspeed You Black Emperor, they have just as much climatic emotion as Mogwai, and they easily rival Explosions In the Sky with their epic, cinematic sweepings. And yeah, all this on a 7 song, 66 minute debut! The record title (Storyboard) is very telling of the bands ability to communicate through mood, tone, and pace, and while there are no vocals to speak of, Storyboard speaks to me in ways only the most powerful post-rock music can. "Gathering Pieces" is an 18 minute introduction that does anything but lull me to sleep, despite its peaceful transitions. A typewriter sets off the rhythm of "6pm", a song that relies on soft drones and subtle delays. Think Disappear Here by Yellow6 (minus the electronics) and you'd be close. "A Wave To Bridget Fondly" also extends the 10 minute mark, but TIYCS displays their unique ability to transition and crescendo as if they're floating on air. More traditional guitar tones emerge on "Weathered", allowing the listener to hear a band that doesn't hide behind a bag of tricks. The intensity builds in "Lift" as guitars seem to crash into each other and the wall-of-sound atmosphere rages with dynamic passion. This is something I hear numerous times throughout Storyboard. At the risk of sounding cliché, there is a passion in these songs that is sooo evident in the recording. I'm almost left with an emotional high by the time the CD is over. Guitars dance around the melody and rhythm of "Henry & Maximus". It's the most playful of the bunch, and gives you the sense that while TIYCS takes their craft seriously, there is still a light-hearted air to their craftsmanship. Epic album closer "Angels" makes use of chimes, mandolin, and metallophone to help create a heavenly soundscape of whimsical, unearthly melody. Resonant packaged this glorious transient album in a digipak case, and the band enclosed a 12 page booklet with Storyboard sketches. This album is a wonderful experience end to end. For fans of Mogwai, Sigur Ros, GYBE, EITS, and Yellow6. An absolute MUST HAVE!


'Storyboard' review from Gaz-Eta (Poland)
By Tom Sekowski

Nick Lane on guitars and mandolin. David Evans on drums, typewriter and metallophone, and Steve Ward on guitars. This three piece out of Melbourne, Australia have just released their debut "Storyboard" on Resonant (it was actually put out domestically in their homeland last May). Their name is simply This is Your Captain Speaking. The goal of their music is to soothe and caress the eardrums with the simplest of melodies. Really haunting stuff, this is. Then again, I hate to use superlatives. I mean, how can you get excited about music that sounds so damn lifeless, so morosely repetitive, almost to the point of exhaustion. Truth is, you can and should be excited about this band. Seven tracks, spanning just over an hour, recorded in an elementary school library all sound well, elementary. Imagine if The Necks played guitars and picture the music as equally sedate. This is what this band's music is like. Exclusively instrumental, the tracks are drawn out in space (some spanning the ten minute mark). The trio is interested in textures. It's the soft, repetitive patterns that give their music a warm, haunting and truly magnetic feel. Once you begin the journey with this record, you're really be removed from all time and space. You've no idea whether a particular track lasts 5 minutes or an hour, and this is the beauty of their approach. Guitars are picked with a sense of economy, as is percussion (mostly concentrating on hi-hats and light strokes). You'd think that after an hour of repetitive [post?] rock instrumentals you'd be bored, but far from it. The trio somehow manages to pull you in with shifts in textures and a variety of pacing. Though, they never break out in any sort of ruckus, "A Wave to Bridget Fondly" has a gripping jam-like quality about it. Hypnotic, mesmerizing and thoroughly percolating from start to finish, "Storyboard" is one of this year's highlights.


'Storyboard' review from Textura (Canada)

Those offering last rites to the post-rock genre may want to hold their breath, if groups like Sickoakes, Mono, Daturah, and This Is Your Captain Speaking have anything to say about it. While not deviating drastically from the Godspeed You! Black Emperor-Mogwai template, all four make compelling arguments for the form's vitality on their latest releases.

How apropos that the debut album by Melbourne, Australia's This Is Your Captain Speaking was recorded in the library of a primary school, given the degree to which the trio generally opts for unhurried restraint instead of the genre's stereotypical soft-loud dynamic. In the opening "Gathering Pieces", for example, the band eschews bombast for elegance with the focus on the chiming guitar lattices Nick Lane and Aaron Trimmer weave throughout its eighteen-minute duration. Oh sure, the album includes its share of epics but they're so labeled more because of duration than anything else (though "Lift" does rise to an anthemic roar). Mention should also be made of David Evans who provides tasteful drum support but also brightens the mood with an occasional metallophone tinkle and, yes, typewriter ("6pm", "Angels"). References to kindred spirits like Mogwai and Godspeed are as inevitable as they are unavoidable but TIYCS casts its own atmospheric spell, so to speak, especially when guitars bring a hymnal quality to "6pm" and build to a blissful crescendo in "A Wave To Bridget Fondly." You'll remember Storyboard most of all, though, for the suppleness of its intertwining guitar melodies and the group's confident handling of its material.


'Storyboard' review from www.normanrecords.com (UK)

After hurling a stack of utterly turgid indie gubbins at me to comment on last week, Phat Phil has mercifully relented and given me some rekkids I can relate to this week. Been a bit weary of the genre once dubbed post-rock recently. It's often sleepy time music but unfortunately it was developing a tendency to send me into a somatic dribble marathon within minutes of take off. So thank heavens for This Is Your Captain Speaking. 'Storyboard' is their much vaunted debut, given a proper worldwide platform now, courtesy of Resonant. A seriously complex but accessible exercise in instrumental guitar textures and emotive layered repetition, it gradually does that thing that only the rarest band (prime Explosions, finest Godspeed etc) can do - that spine tingling sense of unwinding drama and suspense. The drums roll, unfurl and massage whilst the guitars and bass take you on an impassioned and well informed tour of the familiar yet exotic. It never resorts to the Mogwai school of quiet/loud dynamics either, too sensual and beautiful for all that bludgeoning noise (plus it was recorded in a primary school library!). Quite simply one of the most absorbing records I've heard in this epic 'style'. In a nutshell "Studied without the indulgence". On digipak CD only with a cute as buttons 12 page booklet. Make this your cuddletime album of the month. I will."


'Storyboard' review from www.boomkat.com (UK)

"It's funny how things come around, post rock has been out of favour for a while now, but what with a new album from Mogwai this week, Sickoakes making their debut in a couple of weeks and new albums due from Explosions in the Sky and Tarentel, and now this little gem from the horribly named 'This is Your Captain Speaking' maybe 2006 is the year where it all becomes cool again. This debut release from TiYCS on the lovely Resonant label is as epic as you'd expect from the genre - all glorious wisps of e-bowed guitar and rhythmic tom-bashing straight from the annals of the outback. Imagine if Godspeed had a brighter outlook on life; if they looked out over Montreal on a Monday morning and saw green grass instead of BLACK BLAAACK BLAAAAACK. TiYCS, as if you wouldn't have guessed from the twee name have a fun side, it's not all tearful drones and misplaced aspirations - but then they're from Australia, it's warm and you can go down the street and play football with Kangaroos while Joe Mangle cooks you another shrimp on the Barbie right? A very promising debut."


'Storyboard' review from www.smallfish.co.uk (UK)

Cinemascopic post rock from this new Melbourne-based collective. Coming most attractively packaged, this highly subtle, emotionally engaging album is more of a late-night listen than the usual quite/loud dynamic. If you're a fan of Scenic, Dirty Three, Explosions In The Sky or indeed pretty much anything on this well-established and respected label, this is well worth a shot."


'Storyboard' review from www.aleniverson.giovani.it (Italy)

This is Your Captain Speaking is a trio from Melbourne, completely self-produced, without the money and a studio for recording, but with a lot of emphasis on what it wants to play. Their debut album, 'Storyboard', was actually recorded in the library of an elementary school in the periphery of Melbourne and will only arrive in our continent in 2006, when Resonant has the rights for distributing it in Europe.

Seven tracks, for a total duration of sixty-six minutes, each track is beautiful after the other, so it starts with the opening, 'Gathering Pieces', in order to conclude with the most delicate one, 'Angels'. But let us not forget along the distance of the album what is the masterpiece of the entire album, 'Lift'. This reminds me of Mogwai from my adolescence, when I appreciated only the things that were sad or angry, or of Explosions in the Sky but with a double dose of emotion that I would not know how to define with precision, but I am sure it appeals to me, and it is making me play this album over and over for several weeks.

With a decidedly refined sound, in which the guitar is often interlaced gladly to electronic sounds, to a bottom end like paint brushes stroking with the rhythmic formulation of the drums and, at times, to truly valid samplings (which can be a washing machine, a typewriter and the shouts of the children who play). Then, after all this, there is an outbreak and an unstoppable progression that will carry one newly to the tranquility that then begins, as if nothing had happened. The point is that, when I listen, for me this album has succeeded a lot, and this success makes me push play again every time that I come to the end of this 'Storyboard'.


'Storyboard' review from Missing Link Records (Aus)
By Seb

Melbourne's This is Your Captain Speaking have produced a very special album in 'Storyboard'. Superbly packaged and splendidly recorded, the music is a crisp presentation of minimalist post-rock. Indeed, This is Your Captain Speaking seem to owe more to the likes of Terry Riley and shifting repetition than, say, Mogwai's bombastic rock outbursts for effect. This reminds me a bit of Cul De Sac, but it's much more contemplative. It's like Explosions in the Sky with a double dose of emotion yet produced with greater economy. A superb achievement.


'Storyboard' review from www.barikada.com (Bosnia & Herzegovina)
By Branimir Bane Lokner

Not much was known about the Australian band with the unusual name, This is Your Captain Speaking, prior to them releasing their debut album. But when the album was released, critics all over the world were fascinated. That compelled me to contact the band in order to hear their release. They are an instrumental band, and with this album they get new status.

'Storyboard' was recorded live in the library of a primary school where the band from Melbourne put together their vision of one compact instrumental story which touches many genres. The themes that they present in 7 songs, lasting 66 minutes, move from the sphere of early psychedelia and progressive elements to ambient and soundtrack music.

Their concept is a minimalist approach, but one which is not determined by any time or era. Some of the themes, especially 'Gathering Pieces', which opens the album over 18 minutes, with its structure and arrangement, remind one of the songs of Pink Floyd, from their album 'Ummaguma', or of Tangerine Dream, from their albums 'Ricochet' or 'Phaedra'.

'Storyboard' offers a lot of interesting musical motifs and demands listening to again and again. 9/10.


'Storyboard' review from www.decoymusic.com (US)
By Jordan Volz

This is Your Captain Speaking is the leader of the pack among Australian post-rock releases for the year. Paying homage to their contemporaries such as The Necks, Silver Ray, Dirty Three, Laura, The Wintership and Because of Ghosts, This is Your Captain Speaking builds on a strong tradition of Australian instrumental music through a near flawless rendering of their craft.

'Storyboard' is an intelligent, complex album that would be a fitting capstone to any band's career, let alone their premiere into the music world. 'Gathering Pieces', the album's opener, placates the senses with wave after wave of smooth guitar fluttering and gentle metallophone meandering. This eighteen minute behemoth is just the tip of the iceberg as the band continues to march onward through uncharted territory. By the end of the album, there is no doubt concerning the talent of this group of musicians, whom have delivered a masterpiece in its own right.

'Storyboard' sets the bar high for this Melbourne trio. The band's first move was well thought out, and if the debut album is any indication, its star will only get brighter as time goes on. It's difficult to predict the lasting effect this band will have, but if subsequent releases prove as powerful as Storyboard, we may be looking at the next big thing.


'Storyboard' review from www.derives.net (Belgium)
By Didier Goudeseune

Fitzroy, Melbourne, south-east of Australia. Nick Lane with the guitar and the mandolin. David Evans with the drums, typewriter and metallophone. Steve Ward with the guitar. 66 minutes of pure musical bliss. Rarefied atmospheres, immense landscapes, sound economy and austerity, majesty of the nuances. An aesthetic which hinges on Constellation/Kranky/Temporary Residence, except that all here seems riper, advanced and subtle, and one could still speak about The Necks, Durutti Column, Roy Montgomery or Scenic.

Because This Is Your Captain Speaking is not a typical post-rock group – the term is coarse compared with the music of this trio. You just have to look at the only official photograph of the group. It speaks for itself – its class, the look, simplicity and honesty. Of course one should not hope to hear a new sound, but it is on the level of the quality of writing that all is revealed. The group is on the level of its models, and sometimes upstages their idols – but without having the air of it or showing it. The stereotypes are not followed – not walls of distortion, not alternation of soft/loud at the horizon. 'Gathering Pieces', the eighteen minute piece which opens the record, is the composition of which Godspeed You Black Emperor was never able, and it makes one shiver like never before.

And this record is self-produced. The record was made in the library of a primary school (one hears the children regularly between the pieces, like little breathes), and the artwork is of a rare beauty. The booklet brought back the idea of the fairytale of the puppet and the music box.

This album 'Storyboard' very largely deserves a merit like a masterpiece. After the 18 minute piece 'Gathering Pieces' you are not sure you can get up (it is like an upper cut punch). 'Gathering Pieces' is out of the ordinary and cinematic. The music is like the landscape, all in cold and frosted tensions, like the desert at night, which one crosses by airplane, driven by a euphoric despair. And all this with simply three people, without distortion, just reverberation and reflexion. The interplay between the guitars is sensational, the drums more than ideal. You can just imagine the musicians when they recorded this piece – they didn't touch the ground with their feet, lifting hundreds of kilometres from the room of the library to the middle of the Australian bush. And if you can imagine a place in the world capable of the expanse of the Canadian winter it is there, and This is Your Captain Speaking is here in a position of force.

On '6pm', the guitars are starry, and you discover a rapport between percussion and a typewriter. They evoke different forms of thread-like clouds, and different colours and nuances of the sun going down. 'A Wave to Bridget Fondly' plays between reverberations, psychedelism and echoes, like an ode to the powerful sun of the Australian desert. Its wave of warmth creates hallucinations, and then suddenly, after a few minutes of setting in conditioning, without having the air of it, with the least effect of advertisement, without any forecast, This is Your Captain speaking releases an extremely gracious melody. With a free and gracious melody that sparkles like a fresh water lake where you go swimming after a long walk. A little later in the piece, tiredness and the night can then little by little accommodate us, prodigiously relieved, the limpid spirit.

With 'Weathered', the trio finds a more free approach, psychedelic but still always very clear. 'Lift', which takes over, is so intense that it gives us the sensation of sliding under the ground and you feel like you are moving because everything around you vibrates. Everything is controlled with perfection, the emotion pure. A whole experience that doesn't impose itself, but arrives like a wave on a beach as you walk gently by.

The maelstrom begins again with 'Henry & Maximus', cymbals jazzy and guitars troubled. There is a long rise in repetitive tension, and the drums start to wake up bit by bit, dynamic, magnificent, fluid. This is infinitely more subtle and fluid that the usual epic divings whose kind saturate us. The album finishes with the atmospheric 'Angels', which is more improvised and frayed. The drumming is more experimental, with the immoderate use of the typewriter in the first part and then metallophone, and there is the feeling it is not as polished. But the piece starts to reveal itself at the end with flashes of intensity, and like a big wave it finishes like an old broken boat on a beach.

With its first album, the Australian trio knocks you out very strongly and impose themselves as one of the instrumental bands of their time. For their era, they are very good. Hopefully in spite of its distance away and its self-produced character, 'Storyboard' will be able to find the echoes and enthusiasms which it justifies.


'Storyboard' review from DB Magazine (Aus)
By Ben Revi

From its delay-soaked opening notes, This Is Your Captain Speaking has delivered an amazingly effective and highly emotive debut album. 'Storyboard', recorded entirely in the library of a local primary school during the vacation, is a record of joy, beauty and sadness; of highs and lows and addictive, entrancing melodies. This is quite an achievement given that it was all recorded live, featuring only two guitars, a drumkit, a xylophone, and – ever so occasionally – a typewriter.

If there is anybody out there who believes that an instrumental record invariably lacks the depth and emotional character of its vocal-based counterparts, this record is absolute proof to the contrary. With just the faintest touch of a string, This is Your Captain Speaking can attack that same part of your soul, that same beat of your heart, as a poetic lyric or a strained high note. Their songs are long (opener 'Gathering Pieces' sets the pace at a whopping eighteen minutes), but powerful; each song is filled with various movements, repeats and crescendos, built atop one another masterfully to draw you in and spit you out.

In the vein of Godspeed You Black Emperor or even Sigur Ros, This is Your Captain Speaking belong to that higher order of indie music that requires care and attention on the part of the listener to fully appreciate the intricacies of the music within. But open yourself up to the experience, and you will gain more out of it than you may ever have expected.


'Storyboard' review from The Big Issue (Aus)
By Ghita Loebenstein

Melbourne-based instrumentalists This is Your Captain Speaking deal with the intricacies of texture and improvisation, but in a gentle, ambient fashion. Their debut album 'Storyboard' – recorded live in a primary school library! – breathes new life into a tiring post-rock formula with epic canvasses of tiptoeing guitars and percussive washes. Sometimes arranged as delicate, uplifting melodies ('Gathering Pieces') and at others, as rich, collective mantras ('Lift'), 'Storyboard' feels like an exquisitely bleeding love affair.


'Storyboard' review from www.fasterlouder.com.au (Aus)
By Sidkid

In cities everywhere budding musicians save for months to get those precious few hours in the recording studio. They're in search of the best engineers, the best acoustics, the best mics, and the best mixing desks. But Melbourne three-piece This is Your Captain Speaking, whose members have individually conquered the studio, chose a primary school library as the place to record their debut album 'Storyboard'.

This choice feels completely natural given the music of Nick Lane (guitar, mandolin), David Evans (drum kit, typewriter, metallophone), and Aaron Trimmer (guitar). (Between the recording of the album and its release, Trimmer was replaced by Steve Ward.)

The band doesn't so much play songs or tracks but paint emotions with sound. While the traditional studio remains unvisited, the band suits itself by committing its musical mandalas to tape where hourly rates don't count. Just as mandalas are highly complex geometric diagrams in Hinduism and Buddhism whose swirling, repeating themes aid meditation, listening to the music of the band has a similar enchanting effect. The relaxed atmosphere of a school library during holidays is the perfect place to let music like this ooze out of the soul.

The road that runs from 'Storyboard' to Decoder Ring's 'Somersault' is short indeed. Both albums share the philosophy of each band member adding daubs to a collective painting, but with one vital difference. While Decoder Ring took the path of multi-tracking, creating their musical whole through the layering of different instruments, synthesisers, vocals, and effects, this band takes a more minimal approach of mostly two guitars (sans bass) and drums.

Watching the band play it's obvious that intuition is key. When composer Terry Riley completed his landmark of minimalism 'In C' in 1964, he gave each performer in the ensemble unprecedented freedom in playing through a sequence of 53 phrases, but with one fundamental expectation: that performers listen to each other. This may sound obvious, but when 20 or more performers are practically improvising simultaneously, intuition is the difference between chorus and chaos.

Riley's music influenced Steve Reich whose 'Drumming' (1971) and 'Music for 18 Musicians' (1976) are, in a way, the old school to TIYCS's new school.

But perhaps this new school didn't start in Melbourne post-2000, but in Munich, Germany around 1970. Fans of mystic electronica pioneers Popol Vuh will certainly feel at home with 'Storyboard'. That band's captivating album 'Hosianna Mantra' (1972) certainly cut the template all those years ago for bands to explore textures and soundscapes in a higher dimension.

Repetition and minimalism have never been 'pop' in western music. The amazing achievement of This is Your Captain Speaking has been to arrive bearing the gift of this music and be embraced so warmly around the country.


'Storyboard' review from www.iateyourmicrophone.com (US)
By Jordan Volz

Australia finally makes a major move in the post-rock arena with This is Your Captain Speaking. Sneakily slipping their way into the music world, the band's 2005 release, 'Storyboard', continues in the vein of post-rock veterans Explosions in the Sky and Sigur Ros with a large appreciation for the groundwork set down by its contemporaries. Yet, like so many of the other Australian musicians (Clann Zu, The Grand Silent System, Cog, Karnivool), can This is Your Captain Speaking improve upon the work preceding them?

'Gathering Pieces' starts off the album and launches the band into an ambitious project. This eighteen-minute track wastes no time with introduction, as it quickly builds up a steady tension. Relying heavily on a rhythm section that knows a trick or two about weaving in and out of its musical space without creating interference with its own echo patterning, 'Gathering Pieces' is very light on the percussion section, instead adopting a xylophone for guidance until the final minutes of build up and deflation call for a stronger presence. Much of the album follows in suit, crafting a mellow, non-aggressive environment that appeals more to a spiritual energy than any tangible palette. In other words, This is Your Captain Speaking creates moving music the kind that percolates into the pores and soaks into the very essence of one's musical core.

There may not be a lot of material in 'Storyboard' that is surprisingly fresh to the post-rock genre, but nonetheless it is one of the most well crafted albums in recent history. The band knows where it wants to be at every point and turn, with little confusion as to the direction of its sound. Other post-rock bands get entangled in the loftiness of their music and find themselves lost in their search for a complete sound, or they lose sight of their goal altogether while they become diverted through wild back passages. This is Your Captain Speaking stays true to the course over the duration of the sixty-five minutes. 'Storyboard' is yet another example of the completeness of the post rock genre, as it is capable of crossing language barriers and constitutes one of the only global music communities in the modern rock world. Unfortunately, gems such as This is Your Captain Speaking can be easily overlooked, but they shall certainly dazzle any who glance into their world.

Although they may share a guitar approach similar to many of their American counterparts, This is Your Captain Speaking has an entirely different story of the percussion's place in the genre. They make quite a convincing argument; the overall strength of the rhythm section is almost capable of carrying the album by itself and percussion is needed only in times of decomposition. One should be careful not to confuse this line of thinking with a minimalist approach akin to the likes of Byla, for 'Storyboard' is a rich and engaging listen. Naturally, This is Your Captain Speaking should appeal to those familiar with Australia's other instrumental players, Greyscale and Architecture in Helsinki, as well as those generally interested in the post-rock world. As the title suggests, we should all listen, because the captain is speaking.


'Storyboard' review from Beat Magazine (Aus)
By Andrew Ramadge

Despite the infinitely sweet relief offered by Melbourne's burgeoning instrumental scene to critics and fans otherwise swamped by rock pigs and recycled riffs, it's hard to expect a consistent level of excitement from those of us frequenting The Rob Roy just a little too often, spoilt into complacency by a seemingly endless stream of vocally-bereft talent. And so it came to be that perhaps the greatest drawcard for This Is Your Captain Speaking's debut album, 'Storyboard', was rather unexpected: In the form of a death-metal loving neighbour, to be precise, whose previously unthinkable, through-the-wall love affair with the definitively 'quieter' band provoked this reviewer's own re-found appreciation.

If other groups seem like imaginative, innocent descendants of The Dirty Three, or local re-births of European post-rock, then This Is Your Captain Speaking are rightful successors to The Necks, having traded their piano for guitar and their collection of vintage jazz records for the soundtrack to an art-house Western. Recorded live in the library of Fitzroy Primary, Nick Lane, David Evans and Aaron Trimmer experiment with the play of melody and minimalism: Simple guitar lines or metallophone tunes are intertwined, contrasted, reprised and released over ambient pauses and stretched background sounds.

Clocking in at just over 18 minutes, opening number Gathering Pieces floats somewhere between inspirations of process, too deliberate to be improvisational and too restless to be entirely rehearsed. If this structure seems a little slow on first spin, the record's second half offers slightly more deviation and relatively shorter track lengths: Weathered contains something which could almost be named a guitar solo, even if only those other masterful slowers of time, Low, would agree.

Closer in spirit to a meeting of Eno and Ennio Morricone than Mogwai, Slint or Sigur Ros, This Is Your Captain Speaking provide a relatively hushed entry into the roster of expressive, occasionally experimental groups currently dominating our artier venues. Facing stiff competition, this record is unlikely to be the first on 2005 wish-lists, but if it can get Dave to turn off his damn Cannibal Corpse records, I'm all for it. By the way, Melbourne, how's the struggle for Sigur Ros support coming along?

That band has been taunting me since the first time I heard the name from someone who recommended them around April or May. I'll probably be buying their album in christmas along with other albums and DVDs.

BTW, good to see you're alive and well, Black Velvet.

So tonight, we had this thing at my school called Acousitc cafe. And my friend corey and I did an Eastern/Indian based jam... very drone/post-rock improv.

Kings Of Time (2004)

After I listened and, in a proper way, have been dazzled by their debut, I already focused on the idea that Magyar Posse are a constant energy and a virulent quality. So, concerning Kings Of Time - which speaks referentiality, as well as the broken first attempt complex - I could have only expected a clean stream of passion experience. The so-called method can have, of course, the reverse danger of not expecting the less good attributes. No worries, no worries, for this album weighted insignificantly on the blackened side. Though I still have Random Avenger, I take no risk in punctuating Kings Of Time as masterpiece.

In other words, you should have a go, always and in a subtle way - as subtle as possible, naturally - with this album, if e/pr means anything (though I don't believe that the readers and the usual posters around here aren't genre afficionados ) or even if the e/pr manifest is too much of a delicate passion (who knows, perhaps you can't agree upon key-albums...), because it's thumbs up and "look, this counts above many" underlined.

To prolongate this intro just one more time, the debut hasn't lost value or has become of interesting difference, but this one is on the spot the most advised and the essential uphold.

So, what can be commented up here, and what is, specifically, the signature of Kings Of Time? Epic flavour, to start with that, in a conventional twist, but with durable expression. Heavy and dark, bit mystic and tad flavoured, poetic really by lines that go dearingly melodic and in a rightous uncommon specific, defyingly atmopheric. Almost all the moments are dynamic, in the rush of the breath, in the pounding beat - less of the slow-furios clique, less of the sound ambiance. Plenty of idea, but mainly seven parts, and only one method in seven steps: the fulminance of an imagination and the plural of not exaggerately said excellence.

Now, just to mention "the things that could have been better" out of objectiveness: all the excitement drops occasionally to being illusory or tendencious, the tones are deep cold but that's the nuance, too unequivalent ideas are not to be spoken of and some ideas frame exlusiveness. But this is only talk, the album is well-composed and well elaborated for the dark mind, for the nervous tempo and for the styled fan. Ecclectic wins the deal.

In my humble and passionately opinion, this album is fantastic and deserves the interior expreriment, as well as the vast appreciation, out in the zone of curios minds and intended critics. What ahead?

it is actually just a presentation, an...appreciation.

but I might use some words in a future review.

Not sure if these two bands have been mentioned yet:

fromhttp://www.fastnbulbous.com/rev99.htm

Trans Am, Futureworld (Thrill Jockey) 9

Trans Am are the living embodiment of King Crimson's "20th Century Schizoid Man," having bounced like superballs between instrumental prog rock, garage rock, techno and electronica on their previous three albums. Don't be fooled by the opening title, "1999." This is early 80's new wave, where Gary Numan's coked-up Tubeway Army bends Kraftwerk over the couch and makes them howl. On paper it may sound like a fun exercise in kitsch. But in the headphones they sound at their most cohesively serious. In "City In Flames," you can feel Metropolis blowing up. Come the first time machine, they deserve a crack at going back, kicking Vangelis out of the studio and recording the soundtrack to Bladerunner the way it should have been. File between ELO's Time and Rush's Signals.

The trio Add N to (X) are archivists of sorts of obsolete sythesizer technology. They exhume work created by the original innovators like Varese, Xenakis and Moog and on through the 70s with Brian Eno, Suicide and new wave. This vintage synth fetishism could get tiresome had they not congealed into a real band by their second album, last year's On the Wires of Our Nerves and come up with some fresh electro-shock therapy on the tired old nostalgia. By adding theramin expert Steven Claydon, Stereolab's Andy Ramsay the High Llamas' Rob Hallam for their tour, they showed promise as a creative new force in a possible new direction in rock and electronica. Unfortunately they did not benefit from their helpers on Avant Hard, and fell back on the same formulas, often sliding too far into kitsch. With the exception of the propulsive "Metal Fingers In My Body," the album doesn't offer anything their previous album didn't already cover. Danger, Will Robinson, we are caught in a time loop.

I'm surprised by how few post-rock followers there are on the site! It seems as if the sub genre is the prog of prog (outsider of outsider). I'm just throwing in my two cents here, and announcing there's at least one more post-rock lover here! Godspeed, Sigur Ros, & Explosions In The Sky are the bands I follow most (and the most "popular", I know), and they all create beautiful music.