Black Air – Impending Bloom

 

 

Black Air – Impending Bloom
Self released – 2023
Rock, Post, Doom, Atmospheric, Jazz, Instrumental
Rated: ****

We have this huge Word file, counting over 60.000 words, about 2023, with reviews, mentions and little screeds, quite a large bit of which isn’t even finished. One that has been lying in wait for completion, since around February is Black Air’s Impending Bloom. And only now, as I re-write these first lines, do I see the poetic justice in that fact. Impending Bloom, has been spinning ever since that time though, always whenever the need arose to hear something that was able to paint this forlorn and nightly or blue hour before the dawn atmosphere and still able to conjure up feelings of something worthwhile, devious but meaningful lurking just around the corner. The Austrian quartet are highly skilled at providing you with a solemn soundtrack for a night of introspection, directing you, with gestures belonging to a slow waltz, towards a horizon filled with insights. The combination of post rock, doom, jazz, and all sorts of atmospheric influences, borrowing from folk and Americana as much as needed turns it all into a new kind of genre, you could be tempted to call it Alpine Noir. For much of it sound tall, huge, and yet so subtle and calm, like the mountains. Glowing yet chilling and when almost tortured chords howl across languid progressing and serene buzzing melodies, you feel much more and can see that even that blue hour before the dawn eventually gets brushed away by strokes of light…

(Written by JK)

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