Late Night Venture

Tychonians

Written by: LF on 31/12/2015 13:42:27

With three albums to their name now, Late Night Venture has become a solid contributor to the Danish post-rock scene, and on "Tychonians", their music is as monumental and spacey as ever. Most of the time the album is instrumental, although vocal contributions do appear on a few tracks, but even when that happens, the instrumental intricacies take the foreground. The music reaches out to both doom, psych, and post-metal across the six tracks and in general, the band’s songwriting has become heavier over the years. The dark vibe they’ve always had a liking for stays the same, though, forming a sort of red thread from their first record that was rooted in dark noise rock.

Even though six tracks do not sound like a lot, with the shortest one spanning a little less than five minutes and the longest clocking in just below the ten-minute mark, there is still more than enough to take in as you listen through the album. The monumental "Stjerneborg" (meaning "Star Castle", recalling the name of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe’s observatory, just like the album title) doesn’t throw us into the fray immediately but leads us into the album slowly and majestically. When it does kick in, however, it does so in surprisingly heavy fashion. The band’s almost futuristic keyboard riffs make their first entrance on "Nebula" which is also the track here that manages to make a lasting impression the quickest. While the tempo is mainly slow and dragging in the songs gathered here, this one has a very firm and forward-striving rhythm that gives it a different energy compared to the others. Along with last track, "Praha", it stands out as the song most capable of making an impression on its own and not just as a well-placed part of the album in its entirety. "Praha" makes itself noticed mainly through a more positive and grandiose vibe than what we have otherwise been through on the record and it builds this up in classic ecstatic post-rock fashion through an ever-growing volume level and intensity in the themes played.

In the other three songs, there is a sinister undercurrent, which is especially dominating in the psych-induced "Moon Shone on White Rock". This is the longest track of the album and the first to introduce vocals to the soundscapes. The almost whispered spoken-word quality underlines the general gloominess of the song, sending your thoughts on to spinning pictures of black masses or other such occult events. The vocals aren’t especially impressive in themselves but they do fit extremely well to the world otherwise established in this song. In its last part, the songs bursts into a magnificent ending section which sounds crushing when you sit with your headphones and really let the sound take you away. The guitar pattern that fills out the sound is admittedly repetitive but in a very hypnotizing way. "Halo in Orbit" and "Revenge Motif" both bring their own tweaks of the sinister mood to the table. The former has a very fragile, looming quality to it that builds up slowly to a cacophony of distortion and screeching guitars. "Revenge Motif" has a very strong identity through the intertwining guitar and keyboard riffs that come and go throughout and bind the track together across the raging tremolo-guitars.

All that being said, albums like this take some time to really get into a listener’s head but when you give it a chance – preferably with headphones to really allow the music to sweep you away – it’s a rewarding experience. Overall then, this is a very unified album where each song still manages to come across with its own unique identity even though some of the tracks stand stronger than the others on their own. With its wide array of influences from cinematic rock to post-metal or psych rock, it also seems like a record that fans from several genre-camps could take a liking to, and the diversity also makes for a record that opens up more and more the more you delve into it.

8

Download: Nebula, Praha
For The Fans Of: Russian Circles, pg.lost, Pelican, If These Trees Could Talk
Listen: facebook.com/latenightventure

Release date 23.10.2015
Self-released

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