We sang dirges in the dark the day the music died

When I was still buying vinyl, Dunk! Records was one of the labels that got me to spend a lot of money. And for my money, they had some of the very best pressings anywhere in the world. both in terms of how their records sounded as well as how beautiful they were. It didn't help me one bit that they seemed to cater to my particular tastes. I selected a bunch of bands that I'd always had an interest in but never really got around to listening to them.

Day 176 - Am Fost La Munte Și Mi-a Plăcut - 'I Went To The Mountain'

Let's begin with a band from Romania, whose name means 'I Went To The Mountain And I Liked It'. Crushingly heavy, sometimes reminding me of early Opeth or 'Pentecost III'-era Anathema. Then moments of beautiful tranquility, and it's eerily reminiscent of Explosions In The Sky. I loved this one, It gets a strong 8/10 to start off the week!

Day 177 - Le Temps Du Loup - 'Leteo'

Proof positive that not every band from a genre you adore actually makes the cut.

This one is more like instrumental metal, with some bits where fuzz comes in and for me that's always not good. This was the least pleasant listen of the week, it gets just a 6/10

Day 178 - Ranges – 'Sin'

And this one is just the opposite to the previous record. I found it to be rich in melody and some soaring keys just make this one a really good listen. A good 8/10

Day 179 - Celestial Wolves – 'V I I I V'

Sometimes I do things like these. I see a band's name and I imagine that they'll sound something like some other band I like. Even the song's titles led me to believed that this would sound like Agalloch. And, of course they don't.

This one's strange - it's like there are two different bands here, with two separate identities, one very instrumental metal, the other filled with Explosions In The Sky type Melodies. I liked it OK, but I didn't love it. Still gets a decent 7/10

Day 180 - Feed Me To The Waves – 'Apart'

Ultimately, bands that wear their influences on their sleeves sometimes make them hard to differentiate from one another. The  Explosions In The Sky matrix is vrey prevalent here. but there's also some We Lost The Sea. It gets a 7.5/10

Day 181 - indignu - 'Adeus'

A Post-Rock band from Portugal, who knew? And I can't think of this band without thinking about a girl I once dated call Eunice. We connected through a social network back in 2005, and for a number of years we were very heavily flirting with each other, but we never seemed to find the right timing to get together : if I was seeing someone, then she was single. If I was single, she was seeing someone. But come late 2010 and finally things seemed to align and we finally met. And let's get this straight : in pretty much every single way, she was my dream woman. And when we met, things went nuclear almost instantly, we ended up having sex in poorly lit alleyways all night long. But, alas... the scalding, red hot sex aside, I just couldn't make an emotional connection with her. In truth, I had just come out of a long relationship and my heart was still very much broken and my mind completely on another person. And then there's this really beautiful and yet tragic moment between two people who may or may not be in love with each other when they're sharing what they like, what books they read, what movies inspire them, what music moves them - and dear Eunice sent me a song by a band I'd never heard of : indignu. I listened to the whole song, alone in the dark of the room where I lived for so many years of my life, and I spent the rest of the night bawling my heart out. Ever since then I've been keeping tabs on the band, but only listening to a few songs here and there - the ache their previous offering had awakened in me still on my mind. When I learnt that Dunk! was to release an album of theirs, I just had to go and buy it - I still have it, unplayed, itself now a rare collector's item.

This has a... portugueseness about it that I think only Portuguese people will really grasp, not only in its instrumentation, as well as the emotions it evokes. This one is supremely good, it gets a fully deserved 9/10 

Day 182 - We Lost The Sea - 'A Single Flower'

Out of the many exercises in futility I've made, one of them has never been the dreaded 'Desert Island Discs' one. I came close to making it once, back when me and a couple of my closest friends were recording a podcast and we'd agreed that we'd do one episode where we'd showcase our picks. We never got around to that, though, because life, indeed, got in the way. 

Now, that said... I only know of ONE record that makes that cut one hundred percent. A thousand percent. It's that record plus another ten, always and forever. And that record is 'Departure Songs' by Australian Post-Rock band We Lost The Sea. And for me, for my tastes, for my preferences, for my everything, that is a fucking perfect record. I loved its follow up, 'Triumph And Disaster', and since then I've been eagerly awaiting for their new album - which actually came out last year, and I've been waiting for the perfect time for me to listen to it. And in no way does it disappoint, it's beautiful, it's heavy when it has to be but never for its own sake, it's dark - but the kind of darkness that's more inward than outward, and if there's a band that not only makes me love a 27 minute song, but makes me wish it was actually longer... it's We Lost The Sea. It's a juggernaut of a record, I'll give it a whopping 9.5/10

Next week I want to do another label. I'm still figuring out a handful of challenges and whilst I do just that, I'll do something I might yet enjoy. That said, it's Eisenwald all the way next week, baby!