SAIREN

— First review of this album —

Another amaze from France. A multi-instrumentalist SAIREN has released creations since 2015. This album "Vestiges" was out in November 2020, featuring material composed between 2019 and 2020, for launching the audience his apparent intention to create dark but hopeful post-rock. Anyway his musical strategy is not straightforward but full of skew variety. Do not make a big mistake if we get kinda orthodox alternative post rock sounds, but this variety in his entire soundscape impresses us definitely. It's said he has been inspired by rock, metal, baroque, romantic, or classical. It makes sense just when we touch his opus, I'm sure. Yes it's well understood that his creation is not constrained by any single musical genre via this album.

We can grab this fact around his musical attitude especially through the third track "Insecte". This one features melodic verve to remind us of delightful Austrian / German Baroque or Chopin's Piano Concerto #1 (a good example is the strong, enthusiastic one played by Hiroko Nakamura) in the former part and simultaneously dark depressive distortion madness like 90s alternative hard rock in the latter. But basically his sound basis should be post-rock / post- metal. The departure "Sacrificiel" gets started with deadly challenging, powerful access to progressive rock world. Unharmonized melodic deviation in the middle part is crazy amazing. Such an innovative movement should absorb us. Additionally, it's also good that there is something delicate and somewhat sensual in his musical methodology.

The following stuff "Inévitable" involves a pretty mystic atmosphere and authentic post-rock evidence here and there. Not so metallic but energetic blows we can feel all through the track. In "Le Négatif Des Apparences" we can enjoy so- called negative flows and vibes in the vein like Schubert's Piano Sonata D. 959 The 2nd Movement mixed with deeply heavy aromatic tones like Phil Spector. "V'empire" sounds like Alice In Chains meet Dream Theater, drenched in disharmonized anti-melodic dissection. What a wonder. Mysterious electronic wonderland (and one of my favourite songs in this opus) is the seventh "Interlude", followed by the epilogue "Radicalité Des Temps Derniers" that has various appearances - fuzzy loud-y attacks, sensitive romantika, and ultimate post operation for authenticity of rock, namely aggressive challenges. Honestly to say, both post-rock and post-metal fans should give a listen to this fascinating creation.