THE GREAT RED SPOT

SILENCE KIT truly deserve a place here – I’ve just checked Sergey’s (bass player) Top-10 and found “Relayer” and “Thick as a Brick” there ;)

This album? It’s a grower.

Definitely it is. I had some other tracks by SILENCE KIT downloaded from their MySpace or FreeMusic pages, but when you’re listening to the whole album, it’s quite another thing. Besides “The Great Red Spot” is less ambient and more metal than SK’s previous efforts. I won’t speak much about band’s bio, it has been already written by yours faithfully, I’d better get down to music. From the very catchy “Apple” intro you’re diving into SK’s world, where Post-Rock has memorable melodies, unconventional arrangements and fresh sound. No, this is not your another MONO or MOGWAI thing, this is a RUSSIAN band, hence you must look deeper! Eargasmic “Apple” coda drives to “Venus”, mellow, almost invisible track, which flows into the eponymous 23-min long journey. SK’s most unique hook is that they play Post-Rock clichés in reverse – it’s when trips are built from climaxes to mild fade-out instead of typical structures heard from hundreds of bands. “Aurora Borealis” just confirms this rule (but don’t think that they’ve just replaced one cliché with another!!!), and there’s also a relatively short bonus that follows after it.

So, if you’re tired of endless faceless GYBE or SIGUR ROS clones, SILENCE KIT is definitely a band to check out (really don’t mind !!! (c) JT). Not your usual kind of Post-Rock – while pretty conservative in a good way at the same time. Highly recommended!!!

While Post rock is not normally my choice when it comes to listen to some good music, I do enjoy it from time to time. First of all I must say I am no expert by any means, but I do think I know enough to rate an album of the genre.

Silence Kit is, for me, the russian combination of Godspeed and Mogwai and, as far as combinations go, this isn´t very thrilling. All I hear I feel I have heard before (maybe not, probably not), there is nothing exciting about this bands music. Disonant guitars that creat textures on which the changes and tempos slowly evolve are, of coure, the main course, as it is with 90% of the Post bands anyways, but here, although we do enjoy part of the ride, the rest comes out a bit bland, with no substance and nothing to make me want to listen carefully. And the fact that all songs are very, very long is, on the contrary to most prog, not a good thing, for, as usual, Post rock takes like forever to build up (which by the way is one of the elements I like the most about the genre), but here they not only take forever, they never seem to get anywhere.

I must say that although there are some good Post bands, most of them (for me at least) are like these, uninteresting and trying to make the same stuff others are doing without realizing the genre in itself is quite restricted.