By Jase Walker
Generally considered to be part of the furniture and a mainstay of the post-rock scene, And So I Watch You From Afar (ASIWYFA for short) return with their latest addition to their already pretty expansive catalogue of music. The album comes in the form of nine tracks, and what appears to be a “full score”, at least on the Spotify release, which is the entire album recorded as a single track with no specific breaks.
If you’re even remotely familiar with ASIWYFA’s style, then you’d have a reasonable expectation of ambient passages, sparing use of vocals/spoken word samples as well as beautiful swelling soundscapes and Jettison is by no means an exception to this, not that I’m trying to downplay what ASIWYFA have produced with this album, let alone what post-rock is about as a genre.
Starting with ‘Dive’ parts 1 & 2, leads you into the album with an ambient, strings heavy introduction before part two introduces the minimalist drums and guitars along with dreamy, ethereal choir vocals. I mean this is exactly the sort of stuff you’d love to lay on the grass at somewhere like say, ArcTanGent and not even need to watch what the band are doing, just getting lost in the beauty of it all.
‘Lung’ serves as a brief, math rock style interlude before flowing naturally into ‘Air’ which builds even further on the mathy sound and introduces more overdriven guitars and strings backing before building into a wonderful, thumping crescendo towards the end – so far, I feel like the way ‘Jettison’ has been constructed seems to be building a sort of adventure style movie in my head.
After the build towards a sense of wonder from the previous tracks, ‘Hold’ provides a bit more of a tense atmosphere, a much melancholier departure from earlier and feeling almost downtrodden building into its follow-up of ‘Submerge’, continuing on with the melancholic themes which gives way to a much more intense passage that feels almost frantic towards it’s middle before breaking into an extended guitar solo that ramps up the mid-frequencies to the point where it’s broken into punk territory.
Just as you feel it’s quietened down a bit, ‘Emerge’ hits you right in the face with busy drumming and thrashy riffs that oddly again feels like the tone has switched back to an overwhelming joy and excitement. I could imagine at the live show this’ll be one that’ll have people jumping and waving their arms around. But just as soon as it starts, it gives way to the title track of the album, ‘Jettison’, the intensity of the playing is very much still here but there’s more of a focus on the clean arpeggios and playing against a backing of strings once again, calling back to the start of the album.
The whole album feels like it’s been building up to this release, from the ambient joyful introduction to the melancholy, to the intense punky parts that make you want to hold your breath just as ‘Jettison’ kicks into its peak. The energy that’d been held onto throughout the album is now fully out in the open, an epic outburst of tremolo picked highs and hypnotic melodies.
Finally, towards the end of ‘Jettison’, a quiet outro plays into its final track, ‘A.D Poet’. The focus of which is to play out on a sombre string passage to close the album out, what a way to close out an album like this, a journey from start to finish that warrants listening with intent, not something to stick on in the background as passive noise.
I can’t wait to see how they do this album live: it’ll be bloody special.
- ‘Jettison’ is out now. You can get your copy HERE.
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