Saturday, May 30, 2009

Ender - Ender


Artist: Ender
Album: Ender
Label: Darkroom Recordings
Year: 2008






Tracklist:
01. Part 1
02. Part 2
03. Part 3
04. Part 4

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Within the post-rock-encompassing skies of this four track EP, the listener finds herself confronted with the instrumental quintet Ender, who slaves over the most popular of instruments (guitar, bass and drum) to produce a self-titled audible calling-card. The album is made up of moody, yet powerful post-rock shrouded in a haze of gritty ambient. Imagine an cardboard egg-box branded "post-rock," filled with eleven battery-laid eggs and one odd-looking kiwi. Ender stands out just like that kiwi, with the familiar post-rock form, but without the clinical approach taken by so many others.

Like most of their Pacific colleagues, Ender knows how to manipulate the space and ambiance needed for their compositions to flourish and gradually evolve. The combined destructive weight of rhythm guitars and drums in the form of dragging riffs arch the elaborated structure that spans over the whole release. The introspective waves of evolving ambient and stacks of heavy hypnotic hooks are good for forty-two minutes of dark, enticing variations and a few spine-shivering moments, but never seem to deploy their full potential. Near the end of Ender, the band trades in their most heavy weight guitar sound for a piano, and tips the scale in favor of the conformist form.

Once the piano finds it's place in the closing composition, Ender brings it home with a less powerful but more subtle and emotional undertone. Without the drive - one that reminds the listener of European post-metal bands - of Ender's opening, the whole gives the impression that this is still not the best possible result. Their strength lies as much in esoteric explorations as in latent aggression, but I, for one, believe that the latter one - given some more attention - has a few interesting options to strengthen the whole.

Adding a few (distant) vocal accents would expose a more captivating, emotional side of their sound and thus engage the listener even more. At a certain point in "Track 2", the deep combined sound of the bass and guitar triggered a memory of a dirty-sounding Celtic Frost vocal line, fueling the dark tones of that dangerously fierce cloud-formation and accentuating the beauty of the redeeming matte light found in the ambiance. For obvious reasons, Tom Gabriel Fischer's vocals - or vocals in general - will not be the perfect solution to allow Ender to rise above the level of this EP, but if the outfit's drummer could batter their grayish blob of expressions with more depth and edge, they could have a decent shot at knocking me out of my socks. Perhaps then a reference to the hypnotic stoner doom slabs of Windmills By The Ocean is in order.- by Jurgen Verhasselt (thesilentballet.com)


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Monday, May 25, 2009

Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving - Tiny Fragments


Artist: Tangled Thoughts Of Leaving
Album: Tiny Fragments
Label: Self Release
Year: 2008






Tracklist:
01. Part One
02. Part Two
03. Part Three
04. The Banshee

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Tangled Thoughts of Leaving's music is progressive by nature. The inclusion of sparse influences, guided by concept and fused together, is the conception of their own sound, as each musicians respective inspirations force the collective into unchartered territory.

After several years of existence and growth, mid 2007 saw Tangled Thoughts of Leaving construct themselves a purpose built, make shift creative space.

A medium sized room, dedicated to forward thinking; the birth of new sound. In that very room, what was previously theory, became reality, and so began the process of four people leaving mediocrity behind them.

In the months of January, February and March of 2008, TToL used their creative space to record a concept, aptly titled 'Tiny Fragments'. This EP was to represent their current thought process. They gave themselves a series of themes, ideas from a previously recorded improvisation and a set amount of time.What followed was roughly 3 months of sproadic sessions, in which the 18 minute, 3 part title track was written and recorded.

With the creation of Tiny Fragments the band have demonstrated that they would rather risk potential failure than never pursue the invention of interesting art.

In late 2008, TToL approached likeminded instrumentalists sleepmakeswaves, from Sydney about doing a split CD. Hundreds of emails were exchanged as each band went away and recorded their contribution for the CD. The final product was released in April 2009 to an extremely positive reaction.

TToL are now working on their debut album, working towards a late 2009/early 2010 release date.

MySpace

ELΩXIM


Artist: ELΩXIM
Album: In The Half Light
Label: Self Release
Year: 2007







Tracklist:
01. In The Half Light
02. Lighthouse Keepers Solitude
03. Night's Plutonian Shore
04. Seascape
05. The Cry Of Seagulls

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Download - 2009 - Lost in silence

My band called ELΩXIM, It's structured around 3 basses (2 distorted-1 clean) and drums in specific records.
No guitars are used in any record of ours.
We play a mix of Funeral/Doom/Drone and even Black in some tracks. We are two people from Macedonia Greece and made this band come true since 2000. Our influences are bass bands like: Methadrone - OM - Big Business - Thrones - Necromantia - Godheadsilo - Bunkur - Skuldom - Halo and more. The specific album recorded in October 2007 in my home studio which was also mixed and mastered by me. I hope you like It.


MySpace

Nuggies - EP


Artist: Nuggies
Album: EP
Label: Self Release
Year: 2009







Tracklist:
01. Angry Beavers
02. Spam
03. Banana Pancakes
04. Breaking The Ice
05. I And
06. Commander Keen
07. Bazooka Joe

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Nuggies are a Noise Rock/Electornica/Post-Music band from Brooklyn, NY and Burlington, VT. Currently based in Burlington, VT the band has achieved much critical acclaim in their short time period making music together. Started in January of 2009, avant-garde musicians and artists, Eli Lederman, Matt Michaels and Matt Selsky have come together to create a new sound to challenge the way we think about music, sounds and the way we percieve reality. The trio Self-Released their debut EP on February 10th, and has since been noticed as a landmark of 2009, and many have cited Nuggies as a band to follow closely in 2009. The band is finishing the touches on their debut album Native American President which is slated for release for Spring 2009.

MySpace