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Mysterious New Zealand's masters of heavy/psychedelic and dark soundscapes, postcards from new zealand, will release tomorrow, 2 July, the new genre-breaking album entitled city islands, and Terra Relicta web magazine is offering you ahead of its release the full album stream. This is their first release with Mandrone Records.
The faceless outfit, who wants all their letters to be written in lowercase, thrive on distorting expectations and delivering the unpredictable through dynamic soundscapes and progressive use of instrumentation. Since forming in 2008, postcards from new zealand have released 21 full lengths and an EP through Bandcamp.
The band comments: "city islands is the third chapter in a saga called 'we watched them devour' that started back in 2017. The music follows a group of survivors after "something" came down from the sky and devoured life and society as we know them, leaving only ruins behind. It may not come as a surprise then that the whole album was conceived and recorded during lockdown days in November 2020. In chapter two we focused on void, erosion and nothingness so we thought to balance that out in volume three with some full-on saturation, building on layering and space sculpting to lead the listener through scenes from a crumbled city on the ocean."
This release sees postcards from new zealand delve deeper into their use of electronics to produce epic post-everything instrumental soundscapes. The opening track, "as the towers crumbled", presents a powerful electronic focus, which plays with non-standard rhythms and hard-hitting beats. With the incredibly atmospheric mixture of heavily distorted, razor-edged synths and guitars blending seamlessly, it’s simultaneously haunting, heavy, serene and captivating. The moods of each track flow and develop in the most compelling way. The track "snow and sand" feels like the aural version of exploring a desert. There is an unmatched vastness to the soundscape produced in this track with a timeless quality. Rhythmic, calming depths of an ocean world are unveiled in the epic, almost 18 minutes long "ocean avenue’, and yet, a dark undertone is ever-present. The war-like setting of "it just kept coming" delivers an astounding impact. From the marching rhythm and sense of an unknown army encroaching closer, to the uncanny aftermath and haunting sense of apparent calm.
An immersive adventure, in which any sense of time and space is shattered, awaits the listener. The sheer power and intensity of the soundscapes are incredible and reveal the highly skilled musical ability of postcards from new zealand. From the awe-inspiring to the disturbing, city islands is a dramatic experience to be had but you need to give it a try for yourself, you can never know what kind of ominous surprise awaits for you behind the corner.
postcards from new zealand links: Facebook, Official website, YouTube, Bandcamp
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