Artist Spotlight: Chemtrail

Dear readers, depending on how long you've been reading and following our lovely blog, you may remember an album review I did last year about a beautiful New Jersey-based post-rock project named Chemtrail. Our New England friends just put out a B-side EP called Sounds Like Ghosts, featuring a small (but impressive) collection of unused songs and refined sounds from their last five years of work. I'm a pretty big fan of releases like this; a lot of people don't really appreciate artists posting their unwanted songs as new releases, saying that they're just trying to garner more money and whatnot, but I think you can really appreciate how the artist's records sound when you hear what kind of songs they didn't end up using. It helps the listener decipher some form of artistic integrity of the album, and what kind of feel the artist was going for when they decided, "Okay, I don't want to use this song because it'll change the feel of my album...let's cut it out and save it for later." And that doesn't go to say that the songs cut out are bad - Sounds Like Ghosts has a lot of fantastic stuff, with "Volcano Weather" being one of the most moving post-rock songs I've heard this year. The EP has all of the same old Chemtrail love, it's simply more concise. If you liked last year's review, or some fantastic free post-rock, it's worth a listen.

Check their Bandcamp for a free stream and download of the EP, and all of their other works available for a reasonable price as well.