Band:	Ocean Districts
Album:	Expeditions
Style:	Instrumental, Post-metal
Release date:	January 03, 2014
A review by:	Mindheist

01. The Horizon
02. Arctic Circle
03. Expedition
04. Vessels
05. Endurance
06. Aurora
07. Seven Summits
08. Ataraxis
09. Discovery

There I stood still amidst a dull, soundless, oppressively scorching night of July, steadily gazing at a horde of howling demons hanging low in the heavens and dancing to barren dirges of insufferable gloom and hollow emptiness. A quaint, rugged sound strangely resembling serenity post-mortem, oddly redolent of the reveller's trance upon opium, shifted, touch by touch, onto unceasing waves of progressive drone, sludge and post-rock madness. A mark, though unique, had reeked up from the summoned souls of three different shadows - God Is An Astronaut, Pelican and Russian Circles.

The artwork had the seeming of an untrodden mountain, torn by snow, mist and northern scents, peering from behind dark clouds and entombing the ghosts of Robert Falcon Scott, Thor Heyerdahl and Sir Ernest Shackleton - departed explorers from the 1900's. The message couldn't be any clearer - leave no stone unturned. Move, explore, travel before death comes knocking.

The sound itself is a mystery all insoluble. Plagued with unforeseen crescendos, Expeditions delves deep into the neural tracts and unleashes instrumental, ambient, progressive post-rock onslaughts. Majestic coalescence between slow-pouring riffs and chaotic shifts in rhythm within mad, melancholy-laden atmosphere paves the way for the imagination to take over. That's precisely when nature and dreams ooze through toe-to-toe with the music. Imagine...

Expeditions follows a very distinct formula and unique structural inversions - everything segues into a ghostly atmosphere, innocuously enough, with clean guitar strumming, lingering just long enough to be replaced by seething drumming and trenchant, slightly distorted guitars. Almost inaudible digital effects are then thrown into the audio spectrum to veer safely between eerie, dark ambient and heavy, scathing, progressive drone before fading away in total stillness.

Imagination; that's all you need when you're listening to post-rock. You just sit back, close your eyes and surrender your soul to Expedition - the debut album of Ocean Districts, sons of Tallinn, new rising starlet and future post-rock thunder.