Week 17 of 52 albums in a year
Could Seed - The Drop Crisis
This week, I'd like to thank the lovely and benevolent Behold_the_void for this wonderful suggestion. It's called The Drop Crisis by Could Seed and it really hit me in the post rock feels.
It's a short album, clocking in at just over half an hour, but it feels like a good length, it's not too long or repetitive and I'm always pleasantly surprised when I find myself back at the start.
Starting from the top, Another Step into the Light is a great opener. As soon as you hear the drums start, you know what you're in for. Well if you like post rock at least. A nice slow build up to piercing guitars, head nodding rythyms, and a nice little break down. Oh how I've missed you post rock!
Pan Pan comes in next with a nice, soothing guitar melody drenched in reverb. The drums meanwhile? I'm no drummer, but it sounds like they are not sitting back taking it easy! This is a song that reminds me being on a rough beach, waves just coming at you, then calming down once they crash and pass you by.
Le Champs Des Phareoles has a ripping bass riff to start with and blends into a really nice sound. Well it's got some ugly in it of course, but again the reverb and ambience of the guitars just build on the rhythm. It's also got what my head calls the 'Opeth chord'. It's a chord that they use a lot in Opeth songs, but buggered if I know what it is. I think it's played around 1:15 in The Drapery Falls or maybe it's the first chord in The Leper Affinity, or maybe it's neither of them, but it sounds a lot like them. Either way, every time I heard this song, a little part of me just thought about Opeth.
Vent Solaire is next and it starts off a lot calmer, fading in gently for the first minute. When the heavier guitars kick in it's still a sparse song, with lots of space for the drums to breathe. This whole song sits very nicely in the background as you do life, it's not intrusive. You could watch a leaf fall off a tree and think it's one of the most epic things you've ever seen. It's why I love writing to postrock, it sits in the background until suddenly your attention is grabbed by the intensity, and you think that what you're writing is epic (although it's probably as epic as a leaf falling off a tree).
Schwarzwald was in my head a lot this week, it covers a lot of ground. It's no Geordie Greep, but it has peaks and troughs throughout it, from gentle moments to more heavier sounds. It's a journey in a song, and it's a journey worth going on.
The Drop Crisis is an ambient track of weirdness. I like it personally, even though it's only a minute long and sounds a bit like a loop made up of hitting the strings of a guitar above the nut and throwing heaps of reverb at it, or maybe it's a zither or something like that. I don't know, but I like this little track.
Sagarmatha is the album closer. I think they really nailed the movements in this song, it feels well constructed and the song moves nicely from gentle light passages to heavy riffs well. There's a lot in a song that's under 4 minutes long. I enjoy a relatively random moment. There's a fade out/pause at 2:48 and you can hear a guitar's pickup switch gets flicked right before the heavy build at the end. I don't know why but I love the percussive, organic sound.
So there you go, that's the album from 4 French blokes from Le Mans. I quite liked it, I had a post rock craving and it scratched that itch. I'd give it 4 fingers out of 5. It's not a really long album as I mentioned, but I think it's worth checking out if you're a post rock fan.
*I've linked to a live album of Opeth called the Roundhouse Tapes because it's like a 'best of'. Unfortunately, I think because of label disputes and stuff like that, there's no Opeth bandcamp. There's some albums released by some labels, and I'm sure Spotify has a bunch of them all under Opeth, but I really hate to promote Spotify. Maybe it's time I started looking at alternative streaming sites when something isn't on Bandcamp, especially as I couldn't find next weeks album when I was searching Bandcamp. I need to do my part if I want a world without Spotify, but I'm digressing.
The year so far: