Sweek
The Shooting Star's Sigh...

Post-rock and Belgium. Nonexistent axiom. It's almost natural to associate post-rock as a genre with other places… Canada, Scotland, America. But Belgium? Famous for chocolate, abbey beers, seafood, and some indie bands of dubious quality (…). And post-rock in all of this? Absent, scarce. Yet something is moving. Yet even Belgium reveals itself as a shadowy, contemplative land, devoid of sun.

It's a background noise that throws us into this album, and then a guitar arpeggio to set the tone. A narrating voice, which will have little presence, whispers, almost to make the atmosphere even more rarefied, a prelude of what's to come.
In "Microbacterium Leprae" guitar, violin, and cello harmonize, overshadowing the negligible vocal part. The music takes shape, becomes defined, and grows more decisive. Guitar and violin alternately take the primary role in perfect harmony, then fade together, leaving space for the cello.
The song of electronic cicadas opens "Everybody Takes the Plane", a poignant lament that adds character and uniqueness to the album, which it had lacked until now. The guitar, first soft then violent, leads the track, taking it by the hand until the violin masterfully becomes the protagonist. Every surge of the violin takes one's breath away, while the guitar accompanies it without stealing the spotlight.
There's no way to put your feet back on the ground: "Creutzfeld Jacob" (an ominous name for the human variant of mad cow disease) takes us into space, literally, with a sample from an ESA mission, the European Space Agency. Sidereal, at times Arabian, a more psychedelic track than those that preceded it. The arches of the sky become earthly again with "Things are Bigger Than They Appear" which begins, soft and enveloping, as a simple soundscape for a Bukowskian essay on poetry. The words cease and leave the stage open to a mini suite that changes several times throughout its duration; the music at times softens and at other times burns again, almost following the variations of the landscape of a fanciful journey. 16 very long minutes that border on prolixity. "James Piano" arrives like a stab: the piano is the sole and undisputed protagonist, cold in the warm and welcoming shell created by the strings. A short vehement crescendo that awakens the numbed senses, as if the piano hammers, instead of striking its strings, were hitting those of the soul, shaking it and urging it to follow this mad rush that ends, like the album, in "New James", a long and agitated suite where the strings perform spiraling variations on the theme.

The breath is short, the mind tested, the body exhausted, almost as if being tossed by a stormy sea. A sea that, apparently, also washes the coasts of Belgium.