...and so they destroyed everything (except for their good rating)

Album: ...And So We Destroyed Everything
Artist: Sleepmakeswaves
Release date: 21 July 2011

RATING: 3.5/5 stars

The ominously-titled debut album of Sydney post rock band Sleepmakeswaves gives us a punchline without a preamble, a title as grammatically unsettling as the band's unpunctuated name and a strangely apocalyptic-themed start to a recording career. Yet it is in this fashion that they chose to venture onto the market with ...and so we destroyed everything; an 8-track stadium-filler of ever-changing moods, soaring riffs and mind-blowing distortion that is so masterfully pieced together it holds its listener captive for the 50-odd minutes that makes up the track listing.

The album opens with a mesh of dreamy synth pads and rainforest ambience that belie any rock associations until the song explodes - along with my speakers - into rip-roaring electric guitar at 0:32. Cue epic rush of adrenalin. Ahh yes, we are safely in the post-rock genre now: but that doesn't mean we're going to stay there. Just as quickly, the volume drops to a trance-like sparseness that crosses the border into alternative and indie pop before climbing its way back up to the pure grit of instrumental rock. The whole album is a sophisticated musical tease, a perverted winning of trust that is constantly breached and then followed through at the most unexpected timing, just to prove they can take your breath away when they damn well feel like it. Tense, pulsating rhythms constantly threaten to break out into explosive distortion (and often do), yet just as often provide a breathless anti-climax and drop back to the sparsest of melodies.

Musically, Sleepmakeswaves know how to get you, every time. An unexpected yet well-placed wail of violin, a lift of trumpet to subtly up the ante, icy glockenspiel, a mournful trumpet solo floating above dreamy synth pads, and a hell of a lot of soaring, spine-tingling, all-encompassive electric guitar to bind it all together.

Just because they don't write lyrics doesn't mean that literary creativity isn't part of the Sleepmakeswaves package either: the track titles display such poetic intimacy that they deserve a mention of their own. There's "To You They Are Birds, To Me They Are Voices In The Forest" - presumably a reference to rainforest soundscape artist Steven Feld - "Time Is Short But Your Watch Is Slow", the tactile "In Limbs and Joints" and the comfortingly inclusive "We Like You When You're Awkward". Each heading guides the imagination gently, leaving the highly descriptive music to become a soundtrack to the poetry in your head. "A Gaze Blank And Pitiless As The Sun" is a barren landscape of harshly twanging guitar and relentless drumming; "(Hello) Cloud Mountain" lifts us off the planet with a sunshiney mixture of uplifting guitar picking, twinkling glock and a high-flying electric solo; and "Now We Rise And We Are Everywhere" escalates into a soaring stadium-filling piece of epic.

In a genre known for its rambling, ever-evoling compositional structure there is a very fine line between composing on an epic scale or just dragging out what could have been good rock. Sleepmakeswaves have avoided the latter with such expertise that one can only come to the conclusion that the band know exactly what they're doing. Not content to sit within the defined sound of their chosen genre, they are showing a musical bravery that has them throwing themselves into the compositional process with fearlessly broad minds and stunning musical intuition.

Excuse me while I go reclaim my jaw; I'm sure it's lying around here somewhere...

Is it worth my $$$? - If you're looking to add a good whack of instrumental music to your iPod, or simply like pretending your playlist is the epic soundtrack to whatever you may be doing at the time of listening, then yes...best of all, it won't set you back a whole lot either. Head to the band's BandCamp to grab a copy.

Listen to: To You They Are Birds..., (Hello) Cloud Mountain