And So I Watch You From Afar - S/T

x + y = Post Rock!

Given their claims of distaste for the post rock tag thrown their way, And So I Watch You From Afar certainly do tick off enough of its main components. The powerful instrumentals pushed forward by solid bass rhythms and broken up by spacey high end melodies have been brought to our attention by more well known groups like Explosions In The Sky and Pelican. It's a genre that's become increasingly stale, and formulaic at the best of times, but this relatively new band do their absolute all to inject a new life into it on this, their debut album.

Being from Northern Ireland I've always felt that the local music scene was similarly stale, with little to shout about (this, is probably considered blasphemy mind you) but ASIWYFA have demanded such attention with the scale of their sound and critically acclaimed live shows that it's impossible to ignore them. From the Orwellian choice of name and thoughtful song titles to the sheer scale of their sound, ASIWYFA more than make up for an absence of vocals and the album opens with an onslaught as if from nowhere in the form of 'Set Guitars To Kill' and it never lets up.

Their fist-punching-air defiance penetrates each song perhaps at the expense of actual enjoyment in listening, it certainly seems that they are a band with so much to say and a lot to prove that the album becomes a little too long, a little too messy. My personal highlight is 'I Capture Castles' – a track so well-constructed that the typical loud-quiet-loud dynamics of post rock no longer seem so static.

As a whole it's an exhausting listen, and by no means perfect but attempting to contain such a barrage of noise and ambition could never be easy. It's an exciting start for ASIWYFA, hopefully next time they'll cool it down a notch and let the bull out of that china shop.

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