Sleepmakeswaves

Love of Cartography

Bird’s Robe Records

Street: 09.23

Sleepmakeswaves =
Explosions in the Sky +
Russian Circles + Dntel

I can’t think of any context in which I’d want to listen to this album again. Although instrumental post-rock isn’t my favorite music genre, I get it—expressing deep emotions without the confines of lyrics and traditional rock structures, jamming really hard for a really long time, etc. I can’t get into Love of Cartography, though. It’s too epic, too vast, too sweeping, too cheesily emotional—and I’m a sentimental guy. The song titles are as corny as the melodies: “How We Built The Ocean,” “Something Like Avalanches,” “Your Time Will Come Again.” Unlike the horn embellishments in their last album, … and so we destroyed everything, the little electronic bleeps and bloops punctuating the loud/delicate/loud motifs actually make Love of Cartography worse. “Emergent,” with theremin-like guitars and a heavy sequence reminiscent of Refused, is the one track I actually like. But with this release, even at its loudest, Sleepmakeswavesmakesmesleep. –Cody Kirkland