Archive for the ‘Disinterested’ Category
Disinterested – Behind Us
So while catching up with some of my favourite post-rock bands, I came upon an indie label called Dynamophone Records. Most of the music is experimental electronic/post-rock/ambience; pretty awesome. Anyway, I came upon the band Disinterested, who released their second album (but first on Dynamophone Records), Behind Us last year. Disinterested originally started off as a guitar project by a man named Matt Brown, who wanted to test the depths and limits (or limitlessness?) of the guitar. What resulted was some pretty good post-rock music! In a similar tone to that of Mogwai, Disinterested definitely fulfills every post-rock lover’s dream. I’ve been listening to more “avant-garde” post-rock as of late, so listening to Behind Us was definitely a nice break—to just sit back and let the music flood my ears.
That being said, it was pretty hard to critique this album because it’s just too enjoyable. You can definitely tell that the main focus is the guitar instrument—it is the melody of the songs. Synths help back up the melody nicely without stealing too much focus. Generally, this is a mellow album with lots of experimentation of synthesizers and guitar riffs that will hook you in. This albums proves that a mere strum of a chord can sound so good. One song, “Felt Leaves,” features a bit of soft female vocals, very fitting for the general ambience of the song. Other than that, you won’t hear much vocals…pretty much on par with the fundamentals of the genre (except for maybe the fact that the songs are pretty much at a standard pop song length, nothing going past 5 minutes).
The album starts off with “Dissonance,” a song with lots of reverb and synth use. Reminds me of a typical Sigur Ros song, a very slow and mellow tempo. Additional instruments are introduced in a sort of fading in manner for the build up. There is the use of the crescendo-decrescendo style, but it’s pretty much subtle and doesn’t linger on. “What You Wanted” has a similar style to “Dissonance,” what with the reverb and the addition of instruments as the song progresses. “January” has a more explicit sense of guitar instrumentation with a pretty catchy riff a la Mogwai. “Sunnydayafter” is pretty awesome; pretty awesome use of the whammy. Again, pretty mellow. “Blankets” is kind of creepy sounding, like something out of a Silent Hill soundtrack. The synth riff reminds me of the song “Time” by Pink Floyd (on their Dark Side of the Moon album), but it sort of just ends the song off abruptly with the synths. I felt like there was really no closure there. “Felt Leaves” is the next song, and is the song I mentioned earlier that has a bit of vocals. It fits. I like it; it’s a bit creepy and is sung in a similar style to that of Sigur Ros, except with all the falsetto and unintelligible lyrics. Musically it is very similar to the other songs on the album (starts of with synths with a slow addition of instrumentation and build up). I’m not going to go into detail about the other tracks, stylistically they are similar to the tracks I have mentioned. It’s a pretty solid album.
So yeah, if you really like Mogwai or just mellow ambient music that focuses on guitar, I would definitely recommend Behind Us. I’m sure you’ll like it. You can order the album or download it iTunes at the label’s site.
