An ideal meeting between up-and-coming experimental jazz purveyors and an always experimental electronic artist, 1+3+1 takes an expected detour through electronically enhanced jazz interiors. Hardly a throwback to the lounge jazz community, Triosk and Jan Jelinek's colorful musings might be the background music of choice to a highly advanced civilization of the future. While many tracks jump into the 'experimental deep end,' others are still quite comforting to those already infatuated with modern jazz. "On the Lake" and "Theme from Trisokine" appear immediately accessible, whereas "Vibes-Pulse" and "Distant Shore" are undoubtedly capable of hooking electronic enthusiasts. Soulful merging of these two schools turns the disc into a smoothly polished whole, as witnessed on "Neckless" and "Mis-leader." With the boundaries exceedingly reset at the conclusion of the album, we can only wonder: where to now?

Key Tracks: On the Lake; Neckless; Distant Shore.

Perhaps the band's finest accomplishment, Pretest is a cacophonous splattering of prog-jazz-math-rock. The band's first album to be released on Relapse, it's rather surprising that Dysrhythmia avoid the metal tag with great fervor. Several moments get so close to it that we're forced to hold our breath in anticipation of the chainsaw-chugging, metallic riffs, but inevitably the band prove more sly than their aggressive nature initially foretells. Between the ear-shattering technical skill on display and high creative input, Dysrhythmia deliver one of the most lively performances of the year. Now if only the rest of the math-rock noodlers would follow their lead.

Key Tracks: Bastard; Annihilation II; Touch Benediction.

Although similar in scope to Kammerklimmer Kollektief's Cicadidae, The Stix ultimately achieves a much different end. Electronic and jazz are pushed to the forefront, but Jaga Jazzist expresses either a willingness to force tracks into a workable whole, or the musicians are strangely exactly in sync with one another. Whichever the case, The Stix succeeds, staying true to every experimental node you might find them in, as well as writing a commendable journey in the process. Diversity is expressed amongst the tracks themselves, some of them erring on the side of jazz and others on electronic, but somehow these pieces of the puzzle make the mammoth sized band that's carrying the torch all the more lovable.

Key Tracks: Kitty Wu; Toxic Dart; Doppelganger.

International Karate might have been more appropriately named "The Way of the Exploding Fist," but we'll leave useless video game trivia on the table. Weapons of Mass Protection combines early 90s shoegaze atmospheres with late 90s noisy instrumental rock. The resulting effort sees heavy use of ambient guitars and mind-warping distortion, coupled with sparse enchanting vocals and piano, all coming together for a unique taste of Australian post-rock. Although this approach would be all but abandoned years later, Weapons of Mass Production introduces the glacial pace that would mark much of IK's music. Build-ups avoid the sudden, jarring explosion, but instead adopt orchestral inspired swelling, gracefully switching from shoegazing to stargazing with no strings attached. More need to work out in the Australian dojo.

Key Tracks: A Minor Role in a Major Movie; Beach House; Film.

While flipping the traditional notion of a 'string quartet' by switching the second violinist for another cellist, Invert sees fit to fuse together rock, jazz, and 'world' ideology into their typically classical oriented music. Between the Seconds continues the bands dark, playful sound, comprising 5 compositions, 3 improv pieces, and two reinterpretations (The Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" and Bernard Herrmann's Prelude from the movie Psycho). Although this would seemingly create discontinuity in Between the Seconds, Invert's mastery of styles pulls everything in under its umbrella and ties it all together. The improvisational pieces are spread across the album, providing a loose, sometimes avant garde flair to the work while separating the more structured pieces that are on main display. This will have us asking for seconds in no time.

Key Tracks: Sonic Eclipse; Flight of the Killer Bees; In Basset Woods.

In many ways, Cicadidae is the long awaited realization of Thomas Weber's musical project. Although Weber started the project with the intention of being an purveyor of electronic jazz art, he eventually began to add live musicians to the mix and began to branch out into even more experimental territory. The initial release was a improvised reinterpretation of his solo debut, but Cicadidae is the dazzling downtempo expression we've been waiting for. Kammerflimmer loosely constructs the album, providing just enough interest to hook the audience and then allowing them to run wild with the ever expanding possibilities created as the tracks glide by, with little regard for convention. This is spontaneity in music form, careening indefinitely into the hazy sunset. Foggy seems appropriate.

Key Tracks: Über die Wasserscheide; Eiderdaunen; Neumond Inselhin.

If you ever needed a soundtrack for being stranded in the Siberian Desert in the dead of winter, Set Fire to Flames is probably on the top of the list on considerations. With all the apocalyptic talk hovering around the post-rock genre, much of it concerns the established formula of quiet/loud structures which mimic the annihilation of mankind and civilization as we know it. As scary as that is, a more haunting thought is the next one: those of the survivors who are left looking looking around at the blasted world they once called home and the barren hell that now rages in its place. This is the sound of Set Fire to Flames, with the oh-my-god-what-do-we-do-now look as the overwhelming levels of fear and confusion begin to set in. There are no valleys and mountains to be found here, only wastelands for as far as the eye can see...but we wouldn’t want it any other way.

Key Tracks: Deja, Comme des Trous de Vent, Comme Reproduit; In Prelight Isolate ; Sleep Maps.

Before 55:12 there was 22:26, a collection of three tracks in which Gregor Samsa gave it their all. Shoegazing space rock meets epic post-rock, and with Nikki King's angelic vocals behind the wheel, there's not much more we can really ask from the band. The first sixteen minutes steal the show, as "I" wipes its eyes and slowly rises from slumber on a bed of swirling ambience and delicate keys. King guides us through an enchanted dreamworld, slowly yet effectively enamoring the listener's ears and heart. "II" establishes the band's signature 'slow and steady' approach. Minutes clock by with little action: a lone guitar note here, smattering of soft drum beats, and complacent vocals. Then things begin to come together and, in a ultra rare move by Gregor Samsa, we witness them gaining momentum. Once it begins to catch on it's much too late to stop, as the track goes barreling out of control with unprecedented energy and composure. Sure, this is a dead ringer for Sigur Ros, but when it sounds this heavenly who really cares?

 

Key Tracks: I, II.

Although Seascapes of the Interior enjoyed a lush eight year history, All Safe, All Well is the band's only album, sliding in just before their inevitably demise. This album is a cinematic masterpiece, harnessing the powers of subtlety and catharsis and somehow mediating these into a smooth sound which can either enrapture the listener by plodding along for countless minutes on end or delivering a swift and violent wall of sound. "Symbiont Step" is the album's highlight, displaying the full range of effects in Seascapes of the Interior's arsenal as the quartet stuns us with jaw-dropping beauty. Other tracks do well to complement the overarching mood of the album, which guides the listener through the wonderful soundscapes of Australia and ties together a larger picture which doesn't just rest on cinematic beauty. It's quite a shame Seascapes threw in the towel after an extremely impressive debut; larger things certainly awaited them years later.

Key Tracks: Symbiont Step; Entwined Essence Passing; Moving.

As one of the leading proponents of the US's neo-classical movement, Rachel's has been an inspirational bands in the late 90s and early 00s. Systems/Layers comes in and raises the band to an even higher level, one that barely intersects the post rock genre at several places ("Water from the Same Source," "Esperanza") yet inevitably stays confined to its own arena. Systems/Layers has a little of everything the band does best, whether it be straight-forward classical pieces, avant garde detours, or even the stray vocal centered track -- all are equally mesmerizing. Everything is performed with the utmost sophistication, solidifying Rachel’s as a timeless act who’s had indeterminable amount of influence upon their peers and a lasting effect on the state of music.

Key Tracks: Water From the Same Source; Esperanza.

Happy Songs for Happy People witnesses Mogwai continually growing and evolving with its music. The band's fourth album is even less concerned with monolithic walls of sounds than its predecessors, which is evident from the brevity of the album and the majority of its tracks. "Ratts of the Capital," the one track that is an obvious throwback to previous material, is performed so nonchalantly that we can sense the band becoming bored with its own past. Progress is seen in tracks like the vibrant "Hunted By a Freak" and cataclysmic "Stop Coming to My House." Meanwhile, the band has an electronica-oriented breakthrough in "I Know You Are But What Am I?", a track which abandons any preconceived notions of what Mogwai can and can't accomplish and just dives into a whole new world. This is the band at its most contemplative, using arrangements and melodies to craft endearing music instead of relying on brute force and death defying dynamic shifts. Its reasons like this why the band always has and always will come out on top.

Key Tracks: Hunted by a Freak; I Know You Are But What Am I?; Stop Coming to My House.

Part of the slow but eventual splintering of the ineffable Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Esmerine's debut effort condenses the former's classical tendencies into a single album. If Only a Sweet Surrender... expertly conveys the dark emotions of the project with little more than string instruments as tools. Albeit, percussive instruments do make small contributions, but tracks like "Tungsten" and "There Were No Footprints in the Dust..." show the superfluous nature of traditional guitars in post-rock movements. Meanwhile, "Sweet Surrender Be True" demonstrates that no ounce of the haunting, brooding spirit is sacrificed in this transition; if anything, the relative simplicity attributed to the track makes it all the more eerie. A thrilling debut.

Key Tracks: There Were No Footprints in the Dust...; Tungsten; Sweet Surrender Be True.

Bridging the worlds of ambient chill-out and IDM electronica, Lights Out Asia's debut is a euphoric treat. Slick programmed beats meet ambient guitar, synth, and electronic wizardry, all of which create an effect much greater than the sum of their parts. Several tracks include vocals, but the versatility of Chris Schaefer's range allows it to drag almost motionless with the guitar lines or fly with the soaring synths. This is, of course, just the icing on the cake, as even without the pinpoint vocals we'd still be left with a dominant album, overtly confident in its own mastering of the material on hand. Tracks like "Absence of Oceans" and "Sigil" are dangerously tempting, progressing through a wide array of emotions, recalling each in turn ,and moving between them without the faintest hint of strain. This commanding effort surely deserves praise.

Key Tracks: Chapters of a Red Sky; Absence of Oceans; Sigil.

Colleen's debut album is an imaginative piece of art that is playful and provocative. There's a magical quality to it that is difficult to put into words, almost as if the listener has stumbled into a fairytale and the mind resists what the periphery sensors are telling it to be true. Cecile Schott's masterpiece experiments with loops and our brain's interpretation of repetition. Layers are built upon with loops and sparse live instrumentation, and this is nothing earth shattering at first, but it becomes increasingly difficult to consciously detect the patterns working behind the scene. Layers are configured differently in each passing segment, and even though much of the music we are hearing is essentially the same, the manipulation of the tracks themselves provide a consistent source of deviation in the work. The resulting work is a hypnotic blend of sounds and styles, somewhat minimalist in creation but not in execution. A triumph for experimental music.

Key Tracks: Your Heart on Your Sleeve; Babies; In the Train with No Lights.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but looking back, it seems as if The Impossible Leap in One Hundred Simple Steps was released eons ago. However, From Monument to Masses' mockery of political figures still hits strongly; not much has changed in the US since this album's creation, and the utterly ridiculous samples still have the same effect they once had. 'America is the greatest force that God has ever allowed to exist on his footstool' (Eisenhower). Although many have attempted to turn their instrumental art into political protest, none have touched the greatness of From Monument to Masses.'"You ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up? You know that feeling...that the whole country is one inch away from saying, "That's it, forget it!" Think about it. Everything's polluted: the environment, the government, the schools, you name it. You out there? You listening?" (Mark Hunter). Powerful.

Key Tracks: Sharpshooter; From the Mountains to the Prairies; Comrades and Friends.

It's quite admirable that Dirty Three has remained consistently at the top of their game for over a decade. As the band's approach is largely emotional in nature, an emphasis is placed upon moods and feelings rather than drastic compositional changes through the band's career. Their sixth album, She Has No String Apollo, follows the trio into darker territory than previously seen. We won't find many upbeat, dancy tunes, a previous favorite of the largely folk influenced Dirty Three, but instead we're given tunes of sadness ("She Lifted the Net"), anger ("Rude"), and remorse ("Sister Let Them Try and Follow"). Dirty Three's classical bent is also downplayed for this effort, which adopts more of a rock feeling, even picking up a bass guitar on "Long Way to Go With No Punch" to great effect. Arguably one of the band's strongest efforts, She Has No String Apollo is essential listening for 2003.

Key Tracks: She Has No Strings; Sister Let Them Try and Follow; She Lifted the Net.

It's well known that those who fancy Grails enjoy their music to get down in the mud and dirty. The band's debut album trades in standard epic instrumentals for earthy, folky tracks that thrash in their own misgivings. Retrospectively, we often forget how perfectly the violin melted into The Burden of Hope, squeaking and squealing its way into the listeners heart while hollow drums tumble over rustic guitars. Obvious references are drawn between Dirty Three and Do Make Say Think, but the sound sculpted by Grails is ultimately their own, aided by a detail oriented approach to song-writing. With so much fringe audio wisping around the tracks, it's hard to believe that everything was planned precisely as it sounds, but Grails sure makes it look convincing. That's a sign of greatness in the making, and the start of a beautiful career for this band.

Key Tracks: Burden of Hope; Space Prophet Dogon; Broken Ballad.

On the other side of the world, a small band by the name of Jakob is dedicated to building one of the most impressive resumes around. Cale:Drew is quite the curious record, essentially attempting to be an 'ambient' album without the heavy post-production editing required to make it one in the normal sense of the word. Jakob is content to hack away with a stack full of pedals, slowly building layers of ambient guitar melodies until the highly textured soundscape is oversaturated and erupts in a violent storm of efflorescent energy. Cale:Drew could easily degenerate into repetitiveness, but it doesn't. A balance is reached through meditative passages of broad, translucent strokes, which effectively cut into the more dogmatic tracks to relieve the mounting tension. Unsurprisingly, Cale:Drew was years ahead of its time.

Key Tracks: Semaphore; Jimmy Hoffa; Laburnum.

It was only a matter of time until post-rock's legacy returned again to the south. Emery Reel's marvelous debut is nothing short of spectacular, even though they were never given due credit for their efforts in For and Acted upon through Diversions. By giving traditional post-rock aesthetics a southern touch, the band has created an endearing, heartfelt album. The album is built upon a quiet/loud foundation, expanding the quiet parts with subtle appeal to country, as well as a frequent addition of glockenspiel, and following with utterly terrorizing, earth-shattering finales. The contrast present between these two forces is so heavy that our bones begin to shake in anticipation of the next life-threatening blow. Years later, it's still quite apparent that Emery Reel has a better handle on the genre than many of their more active contemporaries, and even though the band continues to be one of the most overlooked band the world has ever birthed, there's really no reason why they shouldn't be considered one of the top acts around.

Key Tracks: A New Beginning; Hence, Therefore, Again; His Hammer is My Axe.

Although the groundwork to M83's success was laid down in the self-titled effort, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts delivers on the promise that this would be one of the premiere electronic artists of the new millennium. Synths are splattered all over a strong electronic framework, carefully building a piece which satisfies an outward aesthetic appeal, as well as detailing the interior. The album itself travels through a bipolar realm, sometimes plunging into icy, frozen waters with the slowest electronica imaginable, and other times soaring into dark, turbulent clouds on the onset of a massive thunderstorm, zapping passerbys with thick synthetic bolts of lightening. The synth is there to capture it all: the glorious highs and the devastatingly bleak lows. This is precisely the what it sounds like to catch a rising star.

Key Tracks: Unrecorded; America; On a White Lake, Near a Green Mountain.

Composed almost entirely on electric guitar and analog synth, Minor Shadows captures the spirit of atmospheric post-rock without really breaking a sweat. The slow burning tracks mix it up by carefully introducing other characters -- distant echoes of horns, brief drum programming, even the fleeting audio sample -- but inevitably it's the interaction between guitar and synth that carry the listener into 1 Mile North's transcendental world. By invoking a sense of weightless, Minor Shadows suspends time and unravels a brilliant experience which can be described as sleepy, but you'll find the album too engaging to be considered a true complement to your subconscious. Regardless, rarely do we see a band with a better understanding of its musical space and tightly walking the line between minimalism and abstraction. 1 Mile North is clearly one of the US' most important acts of the decade.

 

Key Tracks: In 1983 He Loved to Fly; Black Lines; The Manual.

Over the course of Four Tet's career, Kieran Hebden has drastically increased the credibility of the 'laptop artist.' Not only is Hebden responsible for some of the landmark albums in the field, but Rounds is one of those rare albums that transcends genre boundaries and leaves behind a legacy for future generations. Each individual track is crafted with the utmost scrutiny as Hebden's meticulous technique is honed to perfection. Together, the tracks form a mirage of staccatos and the web of digital manipulation completely captures the listener in a haze of electronically cut samples and rugged beats. Incidentally, the abrasion of the album is turned into one of its greatest strengths and makes it impossible to turn your attention elsewhere. It doesn't get much better than this.

Key Tracks: Hands; She Moves She; And They All Look Broken Hearted.

In one fluid motion, Explosions in the Sky redefined what it meant to be an instrumental rock band over the course of 45 minutes, perhaps creating the most accessible instrumental album in existence. Emotions are clearly pushed to the forefront of the experience as we're astonished at the wide range of sentiments that can be expressed without the vocal anchor. Although TEINACDP is broken down into five separate tracks, the cohesion between these movements suggests that we're interacting with a living whole. This is music that mimics life -- undoubtedly moving and powerful, beautiful, and constantly cinematic. Here is an example of a band where the music truly does all the talking. Rules for the new millennium: speak softly, and carry a copy of The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place.

Key Tracks: The Only Moment We Were Alone; Memorial; Your Hand in Mine.

When post-rock was first coined, we could only dream of albums like Winter Hymn Country Hymn Secret Hymn. This is Do Make Say Think's finest achievement to date, creating a perfect marriage of jazz, instrumental rock, psychedelia, and electronics, with a few more thrown in for good measure (country, folk, and the rare krautrock influence occasionally appear); few have even dared to be so imaginative. There's more contained in these fifty minutes of music than countless bands will produce in their lifetime, you need not look further than the lumbering power of "Frederica," the poignant confidence contained within "Auberge Le Mouton Noir," or the whimsical "Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!" to truly witness a great work of art, but there is seemingly endless amounts of treasure to reap from this album. Dispel the critics who claim this album is too loud for its own good, that's simply the sound of the celebration party coming over the hilltop.

Key Tracks: Frederica; Auberge Le Mouton Noir; Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!

 

~Jordan Volz