It’s been a common known fact that Bangalore has been churning out post rock on a bigger scale than any other Indian city – starting from the now-defunct Lounge Piranha. So who’s stepping up to represent post-rock in the city now?
The answer, without a doubt, is Until We Last. The four-piece band from Bangalore have performed across the country, banking on just demos and a bootleg CD to showcase their studio sound, but now there’s finally a release in the form of their six-track EP Earthgazing.
Before getting into the EP itself, it’s better to educate people about why post-rock is called so – it’s sort of a resistor to ‘rock’ norms, using rock instruments but creating sounds that’s the anti-thesis of mainstream rock. So we’re talking about music that is usually entirely instrumental, cinematically builds up steadily instead of opting for a chorus, and (most importantly) conjures up emotions without even using words, except for song titles, of course.
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Until We Last check all those boxes with Earthgazing, which seems to mix melancholy, hope and happiness. Their best known song, ‘To Space and Back’, is constructed in that same order – the warm, reverb and delay-laden guitars from Ketan Bahirat and Chaithanya Jade are slower before they burst into exuberance, joining bassist Paul Dharamraj’s steady groove and drummer Ralston D’Souza. Both ‘Creation’ and the title track ‘Earthgazing’ are similarly crafted, transporting listeners to a different place – picture greenery, clouds within touching distance and just a lot of open spaces.
Unlike several other post-rock bands such as Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, Sigur Ros or Caspian, Until We Last don’t stretch out their tracks beyond five minutes on Earthgazing, although they cycle through an ebb and flow like most of their international counterparts. This makes the songs seem longer than they actually are, but it’s a sign that Until We Last have honed their songwriting skills to never have to repeat any certain section or riff too many times. There’s just enough to keep you hooked, from the crescendos on ‘Creation’ to the roomy drum beats on ‘Parallel Dimensions’.
The band also showcases their ambient/electronic post-rock side on the closing tracks ‘Water’ and ‘Trails’, to mark what is perhaps a future direction or at least to shake things up. This makes Earthgazing a good, almost-compact package of the diversity post-rock has to offer – putting Until We Last on the same stage as any other post-rock band in the world.
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