Back in stock: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: Acopia's second album is a captivating journey through diverse electronic landscapes, blending Balearic and downtempo styles with atmospheric depth. Opening track 'We Evolve' sets a haunting tone with its echoey soundscapes and ethereal vocals, creating a serene yet mysterious atmosphere. 'Be Enough' follows, adding a slight techno edge, blending smooth electronica with subtle rhythmic pulses. The vibrant 'Holding On' channels synth-pop and synthwave influences, offering a nostalgic 80s vibe, while 'What I've Been Looking For' builds on dynamic electronica with a stronger retro energy. 'Take You For Granted' slows things down, leaning into a chill-out mood with a mellow, reflective sound, while 'This Conversation Is Getting Boring' introduces a melancholic drum & bass rhythm that reflects a deeper emotional undertone. Acopia successfully crafts a rich downtempo album. The Australian act continues to evolve, offering a record filled with thoughtful nuances and sound textures.

Review: Celebrating its 30th anniversary this Record Store Day, 'Original Soundtracks 1' is a bold, imaginative collaboration between British ambient pioneer Brian Eno and Irish band U2 under the moniker Passengers. Blurring the line between ambient experimentation and cinematic storytelling, the album features 15 tracks that were all conceived as soundtracks for fictional films. Highlights include the haunting 'Miss Sarajevo' with Luciano Pavarotti and contributions from Howie B and Holi and this remastered anniversary edition comes on recycled black vinyl. An adventurous 1995 release that stands up now as an atmospheric, genre-blurring work and a rare and inspired detour in U2's discography.

Review: Heart-tuggingly serene, sometimes morbid slowcore here from Liam McCay aka. Sign Crushes Motorist, a longstanding, multi-alias-sporting figure on the international indie rock scene. Sonic "mutedness" is the name of the game here, with McCay continuing to flesh out his dog-days dreamworlds of low-passed guitars, subtle harmonies, and gossamer (almost barely sung) vocal parts. An almost unbearably bedroom-bound sadness wafts from this album, as we're almost left to drown in the slide-guitarred lilts and pines of 'i just want to hold her' and the equally limerent emo progressions of 'theres this girl'. Then there's the increasingly morbid ambient interludes, such as 'i threw a rock off an overpass and killed a guy' - the album's crunching climax of telephone-effected yawps against rumblingly held chords - and 'loser monologue' - the mid-record we didn't know we'd resonate with. Notwithstanding its sad beauty, we sure do hope the album's title speaks for itself.

Review: It should come as no surprise that the latest from Icelandic musical fantasists Sigur Ros was originally composed in either the 14th or 15th Century, and is written in the Edda tradition, a term used to describe to manuscripts that together make up the main sources of Norse mythology and Skaldic poetry. After all, this is a band that have been singing in their own imagined tongue since before most people cottoned on to them.

It's certainly the group's most gothic effort to date, an orchestral epic that also features the artists and composers Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson, Steindor Andersen and Maria Huld Markan Sigfusdottir, whose collective CV includes pioneering musical composition with computers and Rimur chanting. Their combined efforts feel steeped such timeless atmosphere your peripheral vision might as well be catching torchlights flickering off solid stone walls. Another work of extraordinary beauty, then.

Review: Waves of Distortion (The Best of Shoegaze 1990-2022) is a superbly curated trip through the genre from the good folks at Two Piers, who have served up similarly excellent collections focussed on everything from French psychedelic pop to garage psych. This serves as both a fine intro and a great retrospective for existing fans that will take you down a rabbit hole and leave you wanting more. Some of the scene's original pioneers feature and there are many timeless tunes here that help to document the subtle evolution of the genre throughout the decades.