Album Review: Tides From Nebula - Earthshine

Every now and again, a new and very memorable name in post-rock surfaces, and really sticks as a sound and name to be remembered. In this, Warsaw is lucky to have Tides of Nebula, because this band is golden. I'd never heard anything of them before this record, but after listening to it, I don't know if I want to hear anything else. The artistic, emotional feel of this album is so fantastic throughout that it's hard to draw away from it.

Haunting, puzzling, aesthetic throughout, the feel of the album stems from the first song, "These Days, Glory Days". Ethereal melodies float through a discordant ambiance, steadily growing and stretching, eventually forming into a buildup and a cathartic chorus of awe-filled, cloudy harmonies. A calm, pensive bridge leads up to a reprise of the chorus, and then an egression of that powerful, moving melody begins to dissipate into slower and slower moving, separate tunes of their own, eventually fading away.



The second song, already released single "The Fall of Leviathan", continues the same type of wistful but serene air, intensifying to a release, and a dreamy, abstract haze of sound begins, sparse at first, but inspirited, reinforcing itself and amplifying with graceful guitar effects to an expulsion of feeling, heavy strumming and darker, harder hits from the drums, creating a pungent, biting rhythm, latent with a sadness too good to release; but alas, with the final hit, the song fades into the bitter space of the nebula.

This album was a huge surprise for me: before this point, I had never even really heard anything by Tides from Nebula, but it's certainly not a negative thing. The wonderful fabrication and sophisticated manipulation of sound I heard on this album were impressive, to say the least. I won't spoil any more of the album for you, but I will say that if you have the opportunity to pick this up, it is a fantastic movement in post-rock, and a truly inspiring listen.

You can stream some stuff on last.fm by these guys here, and when their new album finally hits the stores, you can order it off their site here.

Track Listing:
1) These Days, Glory Days
2) The Fall of Leviathan
3) Waiting For The World To Turn Black
4) Caravans
5) White Gardens
6) Hypothermia
7) Siberia
8) Cemetery Of Frozen Ships