Italian instrumental post-rock band En Plein Air (French for ‘in the open air’) first appeared on Fluttery back in 2009 with their debut ‘L’Alba Irradia L’Inutile Parola’ EP, and two years on this debut self-titled album sees them gracefully overcoming a series of travails that apparently saw all of their instruments being stolen from their rehearsal space at one point. The seven tracks collected here see En Plein Air building lush emotive arrangements using viola, cello, guitars, drums and subtly-placed electronics, and while there’s certainly plenty of familiar post-rock territory covered here, it’s the forays into harder edged guitar crunch that mark the band apart from many of their post Tortoise / Thrill Jockey peers. Opening track ‘Waterloo’ is emblematic of the above approach, slowly coming into focus amidst dreamy minimalist piano chords before a wall of rock guitars suddenly flares into life, mournful strings coiling tightly around a backbone of clattering drums, the entire track only deviating from its fiery ascendance for a wander into blurred sounding guitar chords and subaquatic electronic sloshes halfway through.
‘Sul Confine’ meanwhile sees fluttering programmed beats and slow languid violins preparing the way for a wash of cold synth textures and howling guitar bends, only for chugging metallic powerchords and crashing live drums to take things off into the sort of brooding territory you’d most likely associate with the likes of Isis, before the graceful ‘Comete’ offers a gentle refuge from the storm that preceded at as feathery flamenco-tinged guitar strokes glide against a lush backdrop of melancholic strings and trailing live snares, the entire track building towards an epic Morricone-esque conclusion in what’s easily one of the biggest highlights here. While a lot of the sonic territory charted on this debut self-titled album is likely to be very familiar to post-rock listeners by now, En Plein Air manage to move with a sense of confidence whilst packing an unexpectedly hard edge that sets them well apart from many of their dreamy post-shoegaze peers.
Chris Downton
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