The Appleseed Cast
Sagarmatha

The "Appleseed Cast" continue their intense and personal artistic evolution towards increasingly dreamlike territories, which come to fruition once again in another incredibly interesting work called "Sagarmatha."

This album proves to be a fundamental milestone for the band, elevating them to heights where the air is more rarefied, and allowing them to gaze at the horizon from above a cold, foggy landscape that is at once serene, still, and of great spiritual impact. In fact, Sagarmatha is the Nepalese name for Mount Everest, encapsulating the majesty and the aforementioned spirituality of this recording.

The Appleseed Cast, with great style, manage to evoke all of their sonic influences, bringing them together into an ethereal sound, quite faded, yet characterized at the same time by strong, energetic, complex rhythmic sections that easily penetrate beneath the skin.
Their "indie rock" origins are strongly traced by the guitar sounds, converging into a sumptuous and richly nuanced "post-rock".
From the first track, there are bright, arpeggiated sounds that blend together, creating an enveloping, serene, psychedelic mixture. Thus, definitive changes can be noticed immediately in this album, especially in the use of vocals, which become powerfully communicative; the voice is used precisely like an instrument, not seeking to be the main element, but instead melding into the sonic tapestry and contributing to the creation of expansive and foggy atmospheres thanks to the broad use of reverbs, delay, and filters. Each track develops the contrast between the rhythmic and melodic parts—the first being present and majestic, capturing attention with snare hits, and the second being evanescent and extended, bringing back the spiritual dimension.

The first, very long sequence of the opening three tracks is emotionally powerful and reaches its peak with the piece "The Road West" which ends on a dreamy melody. It continues with "The Summer Before," a track with a more immediate and melodically conventional approach, which proves to be enjoyable and doesn't disrupt the album's atmosphere, also due to its short duration. The short central section of the album thus presents a less complex and more grounded approach.
However, it soon transitions to darker and more aggressive yet far from violent atmospheres with the intro of the sixth track "Raise the Sails," which evolves into distinct parts of particular beauty, alternating chiaroscuro for great effect and intricate interweavings atop a soundscape of great value: this can be pointed out as the most significant track of the entire album.
The eclecticism of the "Appleseed Cast" returns forcefully with the track "Like a Locust," which abruptly breaks from the rest of the album due to an "electro-pop" style rhythmic section advancing obsessively over reverberated keyboard sounds and modulated feedback in the background.
The closing is left to two tracks that "put the cherry on top": the first has an aggressive and cold approach, and the evolution from the dawn-like melodies of the first tracks to a fiery sunset on the horizon is almost complete... "An Army of Fireflies" closes with decisive guitars and more complex rhythmic patterns, definitively moving away from the spiritual serenity of the initial tracks.

It is evident that within the Appleseed Cast's sonic crucible, there are very strong influences ranging from indie to post-rock, with a strong presence of psychedelic atmospheres, and anachronistic hues of a sound typical of the late '80s that particularly involve the rhythmic section, contrasting with typically contemporary sound solutions. These four guys manage to draw heavily from more charismatic bands while metabolizing all of it into a very personal and creative style.

In conclusion, although "The Appleseed Cast" is a band that will still remain in its own corner, it definitely develops a personal creativity and ambitiously tends toward the idea of music becoming a form of art.