Maybe Mogwai started it, but while Canada’s taken the instrumental template into territories so experimental that repeated listens become chore-worthy, Blair and Bush lands respectively have set to work on a fresh sub-genre: post-rock-lite.
Very much with the effect of, say, Pepsi Max – wide appeal, blander taste, reduced long-term enjoyment – it’s a bewildering liquid to gulp. That’s not to say teenage Port Carlisle trio Let Airplanes Circle Overhead flop into a field fenced by those criteria exactly, but the brilliant yet edge-devoid aesthetic of recent Explosions In The Sky material hangs heavy for sure.
It’s not all that simple though. ‘Fury Against The Formless’ shares structural similarities with the jazz signature twisting of Billy Mahonie, only with the extra beef of excess amplification thrown in for good measure, while elsewhere the majority of the Constellation Records roster is fed kinda conspicuously through consciences.
There are moments where an over-reliance on post-rock’s staple effect – that’ll be delay, and lots of it, especially when wringing out a passage that played clean would be excruciatingly simple – becomes difficult to ignore, but dynamics possessing subtle touches of imagination soon level the scores.
Closer ‘Hired Guns Of The Old West’ is the most interesting glimpse at future potential, discarding the tired old inspiration of regular standard-bearers and segueing into spaghetti western repetitions that draw favourable comparisons to latter day Earth. They can’t resist igniting into a tinnitus-inducing finale one last time, however, and although it’s partially unnecessary, as a noise fittingly equivalent to airplanes crash-landing reverberates forth, it’s as decent a place as any to come collapsing to an end.
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7Adam Anonymous's Score