Glittering Blackness, Fall is a talented post-rock band out of South Korea, and if this EP is anything to go by, the group is about to set the niche on fire. Don’t let the name of the band fool you: despite a similarity to a track on How Strange, Innocence, this is no Explosions in the Sky clone. Although an influence can be heard, GBF is significantly more patient than the Austin quartet, and I would describe it as much more similar to the Australian group This Is Your Captain Speaking. Glittering Blackness, Fall is more than the sum of its influences, taking bits and pieces of standard spins on post-rock and blending them into something entirely its own.

The EP is split into five tracks, three of which eclipse ten minutes. The tracks are named simply, with numbering from “0” to “4.” This certainly puts the focus on the music, but it also makes the tracks a bit difficult to refer to. Hypotheticals aside, most of the songs are structured fairly similarly. Where a band like EitS might feature several climaxes in a ten-minutes song, Glittering Blackness, Fall only has one, and it’s at the end. The entire song is one long build-up, which feels rather refreshing after the disingenuous back-and-forth we’ve come to expect from the majority of guitar-based post-rock outfits these days. But where a group like This Is Your Captain Speaking tends to stay muted, oftentimes sounding for all the world like a post-rock version of Stars of the Lid (that’s a compliment, by the way), Glittering Blackness, Fall isn’t afraid to release the energy it has built up in a cathartic maelstrom of emotion. This is a band that embraces restraint, but also knows when it’s time to cut loose.

Although the work on display here is not particularly brimming with originality, neither does it seem stale. There is a technical proficiency with the mechanisms of post-rock on display here, which makes the music very enjoyable. Moreover, Glittering Blackness, Fail has already managed the most difficult task for any young band: the group has found its own voice. The task now is to develop that voice, encouraging and not breaking it. But given the remarkable restraint and keen instincts which this band has already shown in these early songs, I’ve no doubt that Glittering Blackness, Fall will be putting out an extremely accomplished LP before to long. Consider this a band to move to the top of the “up-and-coming” list.

-Tom Butcher