Back catalogue: Post Rock/Experimental

Review: Dirty Three's first full-length since 2012 is a strong trip through six cinematic movements.Love Changes Everything is a windswept trek through arid deserts and moonlit forests, a contemplation of love that blends melancholy jazz, ambient folk, and tender post-rock. The trio, comprising Warren Ellis, Mick Turner and Jim White, has a knack for producing instrumental music that defies categorization. White's drumming is as textural and unfastened as ever, Turner's riffs hum with punk ferocity and raw Americana, while Ellis's strings, piano, and synths provide a widescreen theatricality. The album opens with Turner's disfigured twangs and Ellis's soaring strings, gradually building to a militaristic thump. Tracks like 'II' and 'III' offer slow-motion piano melodies and spectral strings, creating visuals of spectral faces and oily vapors. Love Changes Everything unfolds like a film, with moments of fiery discordance and serene contemplation. Ellis's fiddle on 'V' and the tempestuous conclusion on 'VI' exemplify their dynamic range. This album is a sublime addition to their catalogue because of their matured, exploratory sound.

Review: Returning with their first full-length in seven long arduous years, Texan post-rock pioneers Explosions In The Sky rediscover their purpose and poise on eighth full-length End. Following on from 2016's The Wilderness, which toyed with ambient segues and electronic moments of respite to compartmentalise the epic song-structures, this latest batch of material opts to eschew many of these meanderings in order to prioritise their bombastic, emotive, swelling spectacles with little in the way of sonic dressing. Mercurial, thoughtfully paced and potently cathartic, the work serves as a revitalised and transient embracing of classic post-rock motifs, crafted by some of the very hands that initially begat the forms.

Review: This collaborative project between Explosions In The Sky's Mark T. Smith and Eluvium's Matthew Cooper might seem like the result of a natural combination, yet 'Maze Of Woods' glories in the unexpected and the adventurous rather than the emotive post-rock by which both these musicians originally made their names. With evanescent electronics, angelic vocal textures and chiming guitar filigree combining to create a sound that's as uplifting as it is haunting, 'Maze Of Woods' is as likely to appeal to admirers of the neon-drenched glow of M83 as it is the atmospheric melancholy of Mogwai.