THE UNBELIEVABLE CINEMATIC CRASH

Second album from Belgium's leading post rock groups Sweek, but this album is a real grower compared to their debut. Apparently having now integrated fully Florence in the line-up, Sweek started heading for less-charted territories in the post rock continent, which to my belief remains much to discover, but most bands staying cautiously ion the GYBE! realm. Don't get me wrong Sweek still hold the GYBE! stigma, but unlike many groups, they do boldly stray away (a bit anyway) from the conventional much beaten post rock paths written a decade ago. With a very disputable artwork (they've got to get someone to worry a bit more about this issue), the sextet also invited a bunch of guests, including two wind players, which will indeed provide fresh soundscapes. .

The lengthy (15-mins) Thanx For Sundays opener holds some real sonic differences with the usual canons of the genre: it's rather hard to describe, because most of the ingredients in post rock are usually there, but here they sound a tad different, partly due to François' violin and while not being extravagantly different, it sounds rather fresh and very welcome. The following Tequila Texas Club has some Latino-type trumpet, making the Mariachi post rock sub-genre more than a possibility. The 16-mins+ song goes through a series of fairly rapid changes (given the post rock realm) that metamorphoses its structure thouroughly, while again remaining typically post rock. After the short noisy interlude of Tears Of Happiness, the group plunges in the savage IKI, which uses the full dynamic range and finds its own reason of existence

Although you'll hear the usual slow start laced in the cello/violin sounds, you'll also find the same trumpets that graced the Tequila track on A Dead Sleeping Forest, where an electric piano (played by violinist Sauveur) takes post rock in rarely explored territory. A lengthy semi-playground veering nightmarish sound collage starts the closing Trust Me and after roughly 5 minutes the violin takes the group inro an extremely fast romp of a jig for a stunning finale.

Been dreaming of a Post rock band that you can recognize fairly quickly?? It looks like Sweek might just be that group. While their two records fail to show the extreme nature of the band live, their original sound is probably one of their better assets.