-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Ambient * Ethereal *
Artist..: Lantlos
Album...: Melting Sun
GENRE....: Instrumental Rock
STYLE....: Post Rock, Shoegaze
LABEL....: Prophecy Productions SCENE.....: 2015-02-13
BITRATE..: 939 kbps avg STORE.....: 2014-00-00
ENCODER..: FLAC 1.2.1 -8 -V TRACKS....: 6
SIZE.....: 279.6MB SOURCE....: CD
URL..: http://www.last.fm/music/Lantl%C3%B4s/+wiki
- TRACKLIST
1 Melting Sun I: Azure Chimes 7:11
2 Melting Sun II: Cherry Quartz 9:39
3 Melting Sun III: Aquamarine Towers 8:06
4 Melting Sun IV: Jade Fields 6:29
5 Melting Sun V: Oneironaut 2:52
6 Melting Sun VI: Golden Mind 6:28
Total Playtime: 40:45
Death, murder, betrayal and suicide: Thanks to the salacious deeds that
helped to shape the face of black metal and the hyperbolic reports that
galvanized those bygone deeds as modern music mythology, those options might
seem to be the only such ways bands split with their members. But nearly a
quarter-century after Dead made good on his name, the characters and the
contents of black metal have evolved. Knotty, nasty fury has given rise to
bands who couch assaults in pretty, dramatic shapesùshoegaze atmospherics,
electronic environments, symphonic structures.
Early last year, Markus Siegenhort, leader of the German black metal
explorers Lantlos, elected to split with one member not through torture or
even a tantrum, but instead through a fawning email. "I am very thankful, not
only for your singing, but also for pushing the band and last but
definitely(!) not least for your friendship. à Though, we canÆt go on like
this," he wrote. "I hope you understand our/my situation and donÆt see this
as total cut on all edges. I still like you as a person and still want to be
friends. Needless to say this!!!"
The singer receiving the email was Neige, the leader of FranceÆs Alcest and
one of the key figures in carrying black metal past its atavistic beginnings.
In Lantlos, he shared vocals with Siegenhort for 2010Æs .neon and 2011Æs
Agape, albums that countered roars with post-rock drama and jazz redirection
to varying degrees. With his own project, Neige had moved steadily from the
belligerent black metal of his youth to gentle, sophisticated, metal-barbed
rock. But with Lantlos, he could still scream. Now they didnÆt need him
anymore. "I want to do vocals on this thing," Siegenhort wrote to Neige of
the next album. "I am so proud and I feel like my voice suits the music that
I feel like it was nonsense giving it away for the sheer sake of friendship."
Given the genteel manner of NeigeÆs excommunication, it seems needlessly
provocative to suggest an emerging rivalry between Alcest and Lantlos. But
their respective new records do just that. Released in January, AlcestÆs
Shelter found Neige stepping cleanly out of his shadowed past to coo over
washes of reverb-tempered distortion and arpeggio splendor. He committed so
fully to the saturated sound of shoegaze and the ascent of post-rock that he
recorded Shelter in Sigur R≤sÆ own Icelandic bubble with guest vocals from
SlowdiveÆs Neil Halstead. In spite of the ostentatious production, though,
Shelter sounded thin and hesitant, a concession to obsessions rather than a
victory over them.
On Melting Sun, LantlosÆ fourth and most cohesive album, Siegenhort likewise
sings sans ire, his mid-range croon ferried upward by a set of gentle
effects. As with Alcest, Lantlos has largely let go of the black metal to be
found on those earlier albums. Now a trio, the band has retained a love of
shrieking-and-stacked guitars, though they now flood less-claustrophobic
post-rock forms in order to arrive at a sort of over-amplified and
intoxicating dream pop. Where AlcestÆs own step into the light revealed a
withering paleness, Melting Sun is sanguine and bracing, an album that
doesnÆt lose power simply because the band has discarded a once-central
element of its sound. Siegenhort was right: Lantlos didnÆt need Neige, after
all.
Lantlos runs on efficiency during Melting Sun. In the past, theyÆve slipped
into tangents that, to some extent, only showed just how beyond metal theyÆd
gone-into the era of electric Miles, the atmospheres of krautrock, the
brow-beatings of doom. But for these six tracks, they smartly splice those
influences into one another, a move that maintains momentum. The most
aggressive bits bear texture, and the most billowing moments donÆt float too
far afield. Lantlos finds unexpected ways to link hooks and heaviness while
mostly splitting the space between them. "Jade Fields," for instance, cycles
through celestial harmonies and refracted, kaleidoscopic guitar notes that
suggest Dustin Wong, but the rhythm section beneath them is a coil of muscle.
A minute into "Cherry Quartz", Lantlos races through one of the albumÆs few
black metal spans. Beneath the harsh haze, though, thereÆs a romantic slide
guitar part, the bait left waving in the wind. The moment suggests the
Twilight Sad sporting full sleeves. Even closer "Golden Mind", which drifts
into a Beach House-esque reverie, carries a vaguely sinister air.
At the midsection of "Aquamarine Towers", the three-piece shifts instantly
out of a march, turning the meter into a trap of tripwires and the riff into
electronic noise that creeps like volunteer vines. The moment suggests that
Lantlos should be the next ostensible "metal" act on Thrill Jockey, a label
thatÆs managed to move between Tortoise, Oval, and the Body during the last
few years. After all, such willful hybridization is what ultimately makes
Melting Sun so much more compelling than Shelter, the latter which follows a
definitive stylistic choice to its mannerist and rather boring end. Instead,
Melting Sun pulls every trick in LantlosÆ past into the present, making for
charged pop thatÆs short neither on volume nor surprises nor impact. Melting
Sun, like Shelter, is gorgeous. In this case, though, thatÆs only the start
of the compliments, not the end.
-=- SHGZ -=-
P.S.
** Thanks ***
*** BCC FNT IPC SSR ***
*** For Knowing Where The Music Is At ***
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* NuHS we miss you! *
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