Seven Mile Journey
The Journey Studies
Fono'gram/VME

Ah, post-rock, that much-maligned beast. As amorphous a term as 'post-rock' has quickly become, it's still widely used to describe instrumental music made with guitars, bass and drums, with often a smattering of keys or some digital manipulation thrown in. Not only do the ingredients tend to be the same across the genre, but the recipe seems to be similar too. Loud/quiet songs; plenty of repetition and distortion; a rather aloof atmosphere of detached sadness and erudition. But is there still post-rock worth listening to?

What we have with The Journey Studies by Seven Mile Journey is an album that shows considerable promise, but falls into too many of the post-rock clichès. Admittedly there are some truly lovely passages, in particular during final track "The Murderer/Victim Monlogues", but there are instances when you can pretty much predict what's going to happen next, which ruins the fun.

In fact, that's part of the problem with a lot of post-rock: there's just not much colour or humour to the music, just well-mannered cyclic melodies, slow, serious builds, and little to bring you back. My feeling is that Seven Mile Journey are a band that would let off some impressive steam live, but this album is just a little too generic to truly engage.

Copyright © 2006 Tim Clarke