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!!!

To my shame, I discovered this great Russian post-rock band only a few months ago. I saw them live this month and am going to their concert soon once again. The band consists of 5 extremely talented young guys, who play post-rock their own way. They play it dirty; they play it sincere and make the best of it.

Silence Kit in 2007 released their most cohesive album to date called The Great Red Spot. Pure instrumental: no vocals at all and no cello unfortunately. I really miss this (very important and meaningful) part of Silence Kit’s (SK for short) music and suppose Pieonear was darker and more melancholic than the latest album. But, nevertheless, The Great Red Spot has its own advantages.

First of all, diversity. The album itself is a true example of high-quality and complex post-rock music. Here we have complex structures, difficult passages, sudden drops and a nice guitar work. The opener Apple, being my favourite, kicks off the album with a great bass line, which subsequently develops into a typical post-rock thing: guitars build-up – climax – ambient break. Actually, the track can be divided into 3 obvious parts, the first part of which I described above. Then the song turns into a heavy part, which contains a couple of memorable guitar riffs in the vein of post-metal. In the middle of the track we can hear the most complex part of the song, and then we reach the climax at 10 minutes’ mark – a very enjoyable and aggressive moment. The third part of the song is, actually, a short mellow and calm outro. Overall, Apple is a great opener and a very coherent and enjoyable song in all respects.

Secondly, atmosphere. Venus, the second track, has a rich sound atmosphere and, actually, one of the best melodies I’ve ever heard by a post-rock band! Very beautiful and moving – all this is a result of stunning musicianship. The song itself is very calm and mellow with a couple of awesome melodies – my favourites are at 5:26 and at 6:00.

Thirdly, aggression. Though Pieonear is famous for its extra-melancholic, ominous, offensive and threatening melodies (notably caused by the cello presence), this time there some really aggressive and heavy riffs. The self-titled central epic of the album, being quite a lengthy piece (almost 24 minutes), is not my favourite, exactly because of its length and a bit incoherence, but contains some great moments. It’s impossible not to mention this awesome post-metal/sludge section with currency of 10 minutes from approximately 10:00 to 20:00. It’s very powerful, mad and even angry. One can notice some incoherence among the different parts of SK’s songs, and I noticed it as well. Well, it a minus, but I don’t care – with a few listens I can get used to it and I already did, and now I think it’s just a SK’s differential sign, their own stylishness. And it’s great.

Aurora Borealis shocked me for the first time by its cool sludge intro, not typical for a common post- rock structure. I hated the moment at 2:44 mark when the music stops all of a sudden, for I liked the beginning and thought the song will be as heavy as it begins. But what I got instead? Even a better continuation than I had expected! The rest of the song is a pure post-rockish thing (which reminds me of some EitS current stuff): developing, rich and nice. For just a second I imagined what if the song ended with this cool heavy intro (that would be more typical for post-rock) and realized that SK maybe had decided to play it inside out, reversely! What a spectacular thing! SK’s discovery!? :) (Later on I discovered that the song from Pieonear called Lemon Smell Street is built just the same).

Bonus Track called The End is not a special song; it’s just a speedy post-rock song (a bit psychedelic) with a nice drum section. But nevertheless I like it.

Verdict: an excellent addition to any post-rock/prog-rock collection. 4

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.