Last year, Australia’s Sleepmakeswaves issued a fantastic debut in the shape of …And So We Destroyed Everything (read my review here), which also made no.13 in my Top 50 albums of the year list.

Clearly not people to let the ground grow beneath their feet, they will release their second album Love Of Cartography on September 1 in the UK. And how can you not love a band who write love songs about delay pedals? (if you don’t understand this, you are probably reading the wrong blog).

You can stream the album below in its entirety via bandcamp:

The album tracklisting is as follows:

1. Perfect Detonator
2. Traced In Constellations
3. Singularity
4. Emergent
5. Great Northern
6. The Stars Are Stigmata
7. A Little Spark
8. How We Built The Ocean
9. Something Like Avalanches
10. Your Time Will Come Again

sleepmakeswaves -‘…and so we destroyed everything.’ (Monotreme)

It’s probably fairly easy to lump this Australian band in under the post-rock banner. But this record is astonishingly self-assured, and so utterly wonderful.

Like a fair amount of post-rock, this is an instrumental act, but the music really does, umm, speak for itself. It’s music to lose yourself and find yourself in, music that at times is euphoric, at others unbearably sad. And it’s an album that reveals more on each subsequent play. It does, of course, benefit from repeated plays. Not just because it reveals a little more of itself each time, but because when you have finished playing it, you know you’re going to want to hear it again. And if you haven’t heard it yet, then you should. It’s not just another post-rock record, there’s something truly brilliant here.

If they have destroyed everything, then the ashes are truly beautiful.

****

…and so we destroyed eveything is out now on Monotreme.