God Is An Astronaut - Origins

Coming up with new ideas after 11 years in the realm of instrumental post-rock can’t be that easy. And yet Wicklow-based outfit God Is An Astronaut manage it with aplomb on their seventh long player. Origins sees the now five-piece cherry-picking from genres like musical magpies, nicking a house breakbeat here, a metal chord progression there and a big booming wall of noise whenever the mood takes them, which is often. Horror of horrors, they even utilise human voices on occasion, although they’re generally so distorted that they’re just another instrument in the mix, rather than a standard vocal performance.
Opener ‘The Last March’ is a gorgeous, textured patchwork of a song, with more peaks and troughs than a drive through the Sally Gap, and it sticks pretty rigidly to the post-rock blueprint. But then comes ‘Calistoga’, which sets said document on fire and flings it off a cliff: the riff-heavy opening feels like Master Of Puppets-era Metallica, before morphing into a more robotic Mogwai, with warped vocals hovering in the background.
‘Weightless’ and ‘Strange Steps’ see slow waves of vibrating guitars crashing and washing over the listener, in a similar manner to Explosions In The Sky.
Then there’s ‘Transmissions’, which ushers in an army of electronic elements, before giving way to a tsunami of distorted guitars and dance beats, suggesting that the Kinsella twins have been listening to My Bloody Valentine’s ‘Soon’ on repeat. Similarly, ‘Exit Dream’ and ‘Red Moon Lagoon’ are a little Kevin Shields-like (or lite, perhaps?): the amps never quite explode in the way MBV managed. The sci-fi breakbeats of ‘Spiral Code’, meanwhile, threaten without ever fuly taking off. The closing ‘Light Years From Home’ sees Origins glide out on a spacey, slightly trippy vibe.
God Is An Astronaut have always done it their own way and they remain constant in that regard: what’s admirable is that they’re still progressing after over a decade on the go.

Key Track : 'Calistoga'