Mountaineer
Passages

Vast landscapes and dramatic views are things you might see as a mountaineer, traversing treacherous paths and passages towards the top. Kind of like the band called Mountaineer does here on their second album that consists of two songs all split in four passages. It is an album that according to the press material was written over three weeks in July last year by Clayton Bartholomew who wrote everything in sequence and didn’t add or rework anything during this writing process. It is described in the press material as an album where you hear pure emotion and creativity – not the most common things I write in reviews about music released nowadays. And I think this is a fairly creative album, certainly much more creative than the average.

I read in the press material words like post-rock, post-metal, shoegaze, and sludgegate in description of the music offered by this band and on this album and I think that is a decent description of what we get, any of those words. It is very atmospheric, painted in long sweeping strokes, pretty pedestrian in terms of pace and not too much variation in that regard but with much depth and emotion. Excellent sound and good vocals with plenty of emotion and I think this part with two twenty-minute songs with the passages is a really clever way to present this musical story. And they keep the playing time sensible as well with the eight tracks requiring about forty minutes of your time – time well spent I think.

Entertaining and exciting – good, powerful, dramatic and emotional, is how I would describe this great album that I find well worth looking into. I don’t think the album has any major flaws, and I also think that it is an album that should work well for anyone. You might have less enjoyment of the album if you like catchy hit based music, or music that is uptempo, but even if you like those things I think you will find this album good – anyone who reads this webzine should like this album. I really like it and think that it might be a worthwhile album to add to the music collection.

Wow might not be the first reaction but if you play it a few times it will give you something of a wow-experience. That is why I recommend that you take a very close look at this great album. And I imagine that it is an album that would be a great companion when mountaineering; it probably would enhance the mountaineering experience a bit. And with that I can end this review by telling you that it would be a good idea to check out this album, it is quite great.

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