Click here to view the embedded video.

Let’s get one thing straight – post rock isn’t elevator music. Sure, some of it’s a little winding & pretentious and there are usually far too many words in post-rock band names (as well as grammatical confusion), but as a style it’s enthralling, interesting and often confronting – when done well.

Thankfully for the Australian post-rock scene, sleepmakeswaves do it well (and in less than 140 characters). (hello) cloud mountain is off their new album, and comes pre-packaged in a beautiful film clip, laden with tidy visual metaphors. It was directed/filmed/edited by Frederick Lloyd, a 20 year old Brit doing amazing things with a camera.  The track itself manages to pull off the epic feel of post-rock without the epic lengths – at just over three minutes, it’s a long step from some other opus’. If I was going to dive into clichés, I’d use words like “sweeping sound-scapes”, “delicate” and “multi-instrumental aural experience, filled with dreams of home and lost love” – but since it’s Tuesday, I’m not going to do that. Instead you get one of the best pieces of post-rock that I’ve ever heard come out of Australia.

If you haven’t listened to much (or any) post-rock, sleepmakeswaves are a great starting point. If you listen to a lot, their new album …and so we destroyed everything is available right now on bandcamp, and well worth the $12-something.

Check out their FB for more details on their (very fast approaching) shows. I know I’ll be there.

Oh and also, if you haven’t already – make the video huge, crank your speakers, and chill. It’s worth it.

Art Rush – ‘The Reasons I’ve Decided To Die’ (mp3)

I don’t think anybody is really expecting Sydney’s Art Rush to ever complete his ambitious (and blatantly Sufjan-cribbing) ‘50 albums inspired by 50 suburban shopping centres’ project. Yet it’s this same ambition that creates some intensely interesting music.

Take ‘The Reasons I’ve Decided To Die’, from his latest epic in this fifty-ilogy, Castle Towers. ‘The Reasons…’ is a surprisingly funky slice of stream-of-consciousness lo-fi R n’ B… except that usually in R n’ B, panting “I need some company” means “I want to fuck”, rather than “I’m feeling increasingly uneasy about the characters hanging out outside Castle Towers shopping centre as I make my way home from work, and some company would help me feel less of a target.”

http://whothehell.net/v8