By Jase Walker
Post rock is a funny genre to me. I absolutely adore so much of the inventive ways to create interesting, dynamic and engrossing music that often seldom has any sort of vocals to speak of and always seems to tiptoe around using tropes within the genre itself and retreading well worn paths of song construction. And hopefully, with any luck if you have a passing interest of this style of music, you’ve at least heard the name “sleepmakeswaves” and if not, this album is your perfect diving in point for a pretty expansive and diverse back catalogue of music from a band that seldom seems to find themselves in the ÜK and Europe.
Kicking off the journey through their latest release of ‘It’s Here, But I Have No Names For It’ with a spectacularly euphoric and massive, ‘All Hail Skull’, I don’t think they could have picked a better song to really get you prepped for what this album has to offer. A splendid show of how to use musical phrasing and melodies in place of the absence of vocals, and the tension building up to the chorus segment builds and finally explodes into waves of exhilaration and a crushing finish.
The remarkable thing that I’ve found with this album on the whole is that sleepmakeswaves manage to avoid falling into the all-too-familiar “crescendocore” style that a lot of post rock bands often fall back on, although there’s nothing particularly wrong with that as building an atmospheric journey to a peak is great to go on but it often becomes a bit repetitive when it’s every song on an album. ‘It’s Here, But I Have No Names For It’ does a brilliant job of utilizing varied approaches to keep the album experience flowing and acting like a cohesive journey as opposed to focusing overtly on the experience of a single long song being an island.
Spacey at times, uplifting and grand in others but always interesting and exciting – tracks like ‘Super Realm Park’ and ‘Ritual Control’ setting the pace to start with face paced and atmospheric riffage and some good signature big reverb to pad everything out.
‘Black Paradise’ and ‘Verdigris’ serve as a mid-album reprieve of the tension set by the earlier parts, the former focusing more on hypnotising picking and some sublime acoustic guitar playing as well as strings and the latter creating a synth heavy soundscape that drones while ethereal piano melodies play over it.
‘Terror Future’ returns back to the earlier intensity with some fat dirty overdriven bass and elating, reverb drenched guitar playing and some scant lyrics to add some vocal layering in before moving to the finale of the album’s last two tracks.
The title track of ‘It’s Here, But I Have No Names For It’ is a lengthy, slow burn to two separate peaks, we’d have to pay homage to a good crescendo at some point I suppose, but what a beautiful journey it is along the way. The last peak of this one being a truly emotional release and spectacular mix of pounding rhythm against a canvas of reverb laden tremolo picking, absolutely fantastic.
And to close off what has been a sublime listening experience, ‘This Close Forever’ leans in heavily some extended passages and more hypnotic arpeggios and sliding around the neck before finishing with the all-too-familiar hammering of tremolo playing and a *shit ton* of reverb. It wouldn’t be post rock without it though I guess – I love it though.
There has to be something in the water over in Australia right now as it’s constantly producing some of the worlds best rock and metal right now and Sleepmakeswaves are at the forefront of the post rock scene there and I truly hope I can make it to one of their live shows at some point! This is already super high on my album list for this year and I can’t wait to see what other friends of mine think about this album when it drops too.
FFO: And So I Watch You From Afar, Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky.
- ‘‘It’s Here, But I Have No Names For It’ is released on Friday 12 April.
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