ANA NEVER

When a post-rock bands flirt with these kind of sentiments, most come out dull-ish. "Small Year" is an exact opposite of that. Droney buildups are constantly interwoven with slow, constantly developing, beautiful melodic themes. That might sound usual to this particular style, but at the end of those lengthy songs (most of their pieces clock over 15-20 minutes), you find yourself slowly torn apart by music's sheer intensity.

Still, talking about this kind of abstract music, everything has to be heard to be believed - check this album and it's predecessor on their BandCamp page and chances are you'll get yourself a new favourite post-rock band. It doesn't offer anything radically new, but do we really care about it in post-rock?

This is a split EP released in 2011 between Ana Never and Rosa Parks, a couple of young post-rock bands who are trying to gain a place in this difficult musical realm. The split is available for download via bandcamp, so if you want two good songs more in your musical library, then go and get it. As you can imagine, each band has only one song here, the first one reaching six minutes and a half, while the second one is one minute longer.

"2 Our Mothers" is the contribution of Ana Never, a six minute track where the guitars are the lead instrument here, first with a soft beginning, and later adding a more emotional tune. I like how it progresses, how the drums also do their work and put together an enjoyable atmosphere, giving as a result a good post rock song. After four minutes it slows down, then it begins to progress once again, creating a friendly and emotive atmosphere that will explode seconds later, making a powerful ending.

And Rosa Parks offers "Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia", a weird and peculiar name for an almost eight-minute track. Though the music is not that weird actually, it starts softly with drums, guitars and bass, later is begins to progress, to add new elements and figures while the seconds pass. It makes some changes, sometimes with an increased intensity, sometimes much softer. After five minutes vocals enter, yelling, creating a disarming atmosphere, something very post-rockish. The last minute is a bit heavier and more emotional.

This is a nice split EP, two bands and two nice songs, but nothing more. My final grade, two stars. Enjoy it!

This is a split Ep where Ana Never does a six and a half minutes long song and the band Rosa Park does a seven minutes long song.

Ana Never is a post rock band from Serbia and they were interviewed by myself some time ago. Their brand of post rock is pretty melodic without being excessive noisy. The song here, 2 Our Mothers, ebbs and flows. Nice, but not particular innovative. I guess this is the music also called shoegaze, played by and for today's youth with emo issues. Something like that. We did not have music like this when I was young. Anyway..... and old age issues excused..... Ana Never delivers some competent six minutes plus. Three stars.

Rosa Park's contribution Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia is far more full of variations with a lot of time changes. There are some weird vocals and a lot of weird time changes I recognises from the jazz world. This despite it being more metallic post rock than jazz. I believe Rosa Park is much more Math Rock than Post Rock/Shoegaze than Ana Never. An interesting track and an interesting contrast to Ana Never's track. Three stars and Rosa Park's name has been duly noted.

Two good songs from two upcoming bands. Perhaps a window into the future, this EP is.

3 stars

Ana Never hails from Subotica, northern Serbia and serves post-rock in the vein of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Mono, with the slight adition of Floydesque ambientally psychedelia. Four tracks clocking 66 minutes of an always growing sound dealing with ambient, post-rock and drone elements explore the deepest abysses of one's existence. The personal seal, drawn above the songs' structure is articulated through the album's time-growth.

The life-weary monologue in the opening Streetlights crossed with darkish atmospheric melody line, reminiscent of Morte Macabre's Symphonic Holocaust, makes you feel you are inside the mouth of an ailing monster, who is savagely chewing you again and again. The song gets on tempo in its second half and the guys provide much more technical performance. The guitars keep on reverberating and getting up and down with drums taking the big deal.

Dnevnik Jednog Morfiniste is already known to all of you who downloaded Progstravaganza 7. It's another slab, reaching almost 18 minutes and compared to Streetlights, this track deals a lot more with ambient and atmospheric elements. The way I experience this piece could be put in a few words. These are 'the song of clouds'. The song's floating nature is like a shifting of the clouds, making you wait for the drops to fall down.

If the previous track relied mostly on ambient, 30 Seconds of My Past Life is built on melody, as a significant factor of post-rock approach, while the closing (live) number entitled Future Wife justifies the mentioned presence of Pink Floyd. Speaking of this track, it's not included on the CD released by Fluttery Records, but it was included once when the first version of the album was released back in 2006.

Having recorded and released Ana Never, the band transfused grey into the tunes, showing how the life looks like in a small spot from whose perspective the world looks only black and white.