GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT: Ghost Tapes #10 (POST ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Accustomed to play an instrumental post-rock, the Irish quartet of God is an Astronaut comes back in this year 2021 with a tenth album soberly entitled "Ghost Tapes #10", after an "Epitaph" which had moderately convinced the editorial staff of Music Waves in 2018.

With this new production, the band of the Kinsella brothers chose to harden its purpose, and the beginning proposed by 'Adrift' will lay the foundations of this short but intense production. The drums rhythm the proceedings in a syncopated way, seconded by an omnipresent bass, offering their support to the fury of the two saturated guitars which come to intermingle their arabesques based on repetitive motives. Difficult to make a better beginning in the announced style and yet...

Where the post-rock is able to offer beautiful variations, rises in intensity, God is an Astronaut seems to indulge in this repetition until the caricature of the same pattern that we find on 'Burial', 'In Flux', 'Spectres' or 'Fade', even if this last one distinguishes itself somewhat by permanent rhythmic breaks. And in spite of the passage by some calmer moments, the same mechanics systematically starts again, like an implacable bulldozer crushing everything on its way. After a few moments, the distortion of the guitars assaults the ear until saturation, and one appreciates all the better the few layers of keyboards which come to soften the subject of 'Barren Trees', and even more 'Luminous Waves' which closes the album in a calmed way, where the use of the acoustic guitar and the sounds of cello encourages finally to relax.

Of course, like many others before it, the post-rock label covers many different styles and is probably not enough on its own to characterize the music of such or such band. Nevertheless, in the genre, there is probably a way to do things differently and to offer a little more variety in the sound spectrum used as well as in the variety of composition. God Is An Astronaut is able to do it and has already proved it. Hence the relative disappointment when listening to this new album. - Official website

GOD IS AN ASTRONAUT

GHOST TAPES #10

NAPALM RECORDS

POST ROCK