A good post-rock album is like a journey. It can vary from philosophy to feelings, from frozen mountains to sunny fields, from highway to a small path in the forest… from love to hate. From deep space to deep oceans and still it must carry something tiny that only your heart can see. This is the impossible combination of perfect post-rock made possible by the Australian band Laura in their Radio Swan Is Down album.

One of THE releases in this awesome genre.

Lots of strings and a piano build the carcass of this album. Professionally arranged and very dramatic, it is like Clint Mancell meeting School of Emotional Engineering with a twist of Danny Elfmans vision. The sound is very cinematic and even if you have no imagination the music is building for you great pictures. The whole mood is a dystopian noir movie street with some big steampunk machinery seen between the grey rooftops.

Each song is like a part of this movie. A chase, a mystery, a murder… the sound is a reflection of a lonely soul caught in blank mechanic society. Very similar to a recent noir movie La Antena. The track For Auschwitz is I think the best part of the album. Still the whole work is a very touching piece of music especially in modern music that has mostly lost its soul somewhere between labels and contracts.

You definitely want to ask: “And that’s it?” Yeah! Cause I just don’t now words that are beautiful enough to describe this music. But I’ll try.

So two guitars/mandolins, keyboards, bass, viola and drums, not standard set, but noting extraordinary. In their 2006 release “Remmings” these dudes are mixing together post-rock, ambient and neo classical music. As a result, gentle melodies combined with completely different understanding of music. Yeah Anoice haven’t invented anything new, sometimes it reminds of Arvo Parts “Alina”, sometimes of The Ascent of Everest, sometimes of Ben Frost. But no direct quotes everything is mixed with gentle Japanese flavor and a bit of Japanese folk.

Well actually I think I failed trying to describe their music. But it’s always hard to describe such masterpieces.

The Fountain is a great movie. I can compare it to like the grads of the intellectual cinema. But for me this movie will always be the music.

The author of the soundtrack is Clint Mansell this is the guy who wrote the famous Requiem for a Dream soundtrack, everyone who hears it gets like really shocked. In this movie Clint again collaborated with Kronos Quartet and for the first time with Scottish post-rock band Mogwai.

The soundtrack is a combination of mimalistic neo-classical themes, ambient stuff and bit of a post-rock. Really it is very hard to describe this. It gives you all the thoughts presented in the movie but also brings its own ideas and atmosphere.

This is the soundtrack of sad and calm nights or maybe of cold rainy days, or sometimes you can even see the music falling like snow. In one word – spectacular.

Yes it is a band name. They are from Japan and they play post-rock. Post-rock is some really atmospheric music with mostly positively-sad emotions. Just a thing you need to relax after a harsh day at the office… but not in that case.

These japs play incredibly positive post-rock and they are some kind of real underground. In my experience only bands like TE’ can bring up something fresh that in 3-5 year will be heard as a new pop-band. Sad but true but now back to the music.

The music is incredible, it is a mix of atmospheric guitars doing mostly major chords (they always keep you positively tuned) and a bit of standard but tricky drum-bass combo. Sometimes it reminds of jpop, sometimes of European post-rock, sometimes of space rock but mostly it sounds like an old 80th videogame soundtrack. The only thing that’s missing is an iPod to make TE’ the soundtrack of your life.