My top 2 are: Secret Gardens - everbloom Nordic Giants - Symbiosis The new EF album has also been growing on me quite a lot.
Interesting. I haven't really returned to Nordic Giants since it was released aside from some songs like Spires of Ascendency which made their way in to my morning playlist. I'll give it another go this weekend. I slept on the Secret Gardens one so I'll have a listen to that now. EF is probably sitting sweetly at the top for me at the moment. It's going to take something special to surpass that.
Pretty sure that Jean Jean album is my favorite this year. Still have a backlog to listen through, though.
My favourite song from that album, funnily enough. An album which, admittedly, did underwhelm me a bit, but it's still so highly ranked because frankly this year has sucked an unfortunate amount of ass for me. Next year is already looking like it's gonna make up for this one, though. Of course whether that means more or less ass is subjective. And honestly there's probably a pretty convincing argument to be made that We salute you... is just straight up the best post-album released this year, despite my present lack of appropriate love for it.
There's certainly something special about We Salute You... that I am struggling to put my finger on. It feels very much like an EF record, despite introducing a few new elements to their sound. The overwhelming feelings of this album for me are warmth and appreciation. To see them still operating and putting out albums that are this captivating is a joy to see in a time where a lot of the "big names" of this more ambient style of post-rock have fallen dormant (Sigur Rós, This Will Destroy You, Explosions in the Sky, yndi halda). I'm hoping like EF that they are just sleeping giants and they will continue to build upon their legacies soon. Also, loving that people are digging Jean Jean. The band deserves to blow up. Their live performances in particular are something to behold.
Oh wow didn't expect anything new from them! I really recommend their previous release as well in case you don't know them:
And speaking of single announcements, out of absolute fuck nowhere, we're getting a new BRUIT single this Friday.
On Spotify no less... It makes me think it's a bait and switch. I reckon it'll be 20 mins of nonsensical ambience to silence the people demanding they be on Spotify.
I understand the principle of the thing, but they would have way more listeners if they were on Spotify.
A protest song! And a good one at that Guess I'll be buying a copy of this on Bandcamp to support the message. Long before streaming, the industry was already transforming art into a product of mass consumption and crushing artists to create a monopoly. The term "music industry" implies that art is created in huge quantities like cars built on an assembly line, leading music companies to raise artists like chickens on a factory farm. You may ask yourself: Why can I only find this track? Where is the full album? Can we really have unlimited access to all the music in the world for a few dollars a month? Why are the artists underpaid by the platforms? How can Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotify, use the money generated by the artists to invest in weapons? Is art meant to cause death? Don't dream of being a cool billionaire. They want to be role models for our kids. This generation of ultra-rich people who dream of colonizing planets, shitting in connected toilets and never paying taxes is the cancer of humanity. They can't survive without us and we'd live better without them. It's the very definition of a parasite. Zuck, Bezos, Musk and all this neo-slaveholders with their money can't buy the respect of the people. Today there are still gigs and physical formats, there is Bandcamp and there are artists who still fight by making art for people and not only to please the algorithm. Look for the short circuit, look for the craft, look for alternatives, look for us elsewhere. We believe that sound is the most primitive link between humans. A language that sometimes escapes meaning but finds its way freely. Bruit means noise and at the end everything is noise or at worst, chatter. We love you.
shedfromthebody - Destruction / Breathing / Healing One-woman band from Finland; not even post-rock, just straight up doomy shoegaze, but she uses post-metal as a tag, so fuck you I'm posting it here on a technicality. I fucking looooove this EP.