God Is An Astronaut - Perspectives of Astral Travel

If there are those who believe in the existence of a musical middle-earth, where the real squares off against the plausible, and where pale champions, keepers of the banner of a genre worn thin by time and the elements, believe themselves entrusted with the mission of protecting a sacred relic (in truth, a chimera and a historical fabrication), pouring all their energy into that task, then on these borders it's worth remembering, ten years into their wandering, the deeds of God Is An Astronaut.

In 2012 the band celebrated the tenth anniversary of coining their fanciful name (inspired by a quote from "Nightbreed", the 1989 film by English writer and director Clive Barker, released in Italy under the same title as the original novella, "Cabal"): for the occasion, together with their label, Revive Records, they decided to remaster and reissue all their titles, presenting them with enhanced artwork and in the elegant form of a 6-panel digipack. Theirs is a story that is perhaps not epic enough to have overturned the rules of the game and rewritten the pages of the history it belongs to, but one that has nonetheless gradually evolved, turning the post-rock flag into not a simple banner, but an indicator of the direction in which the winds of their inspiration blow.

The Irish trio made up of Torsten Kinsella (guitars and keyboards), Niels Kinsella (bass and guitars) and Loyd Hanney (drums, synth) certainly follows in the wake of Mogwai (there's no denying it), borrowing from them a taste for similar circular melodies and a particular way of "handling" guitars, rather than the sudden sonic surges that characterized the Scots' early work. Over the course of a decade, God Is An Astronaut, without quite knowing how given the limited distribution of their homegrown label, have become fairly well known, winning praise on one hand for their forthright reworking of established post-rock stylistic clichés, but also for their undeniable skill in pulling off cosmic flights of fancy that, while perhaps not overly complex, are effective, essential and functional.

The band never seems to have aimed for grandiloquence (even though their music might well tend toward it), despite possessing a rather high level of instrumental skill. Their rejection of all virtuosity counterbalances a refined search for shades of color and for the right settings in which to stage their bursts of light: music that is "progressive" more in attitude than in actual outcome. One could keep citing the usual Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Do Make Say Think, Red Sparowes, but the composed elegance of God Is An Astronaut has its own specific identity, rooted precisely in the path they've steadily pursued, album after album, perhaps never introducing any drastic change of course, but always managing to find new scenarios and pursuing the refinement of their own sonic ideal.

One is sometimes tempted to picture them as a kind of sidereal Sigur Ros, more inclined toward an ascent into infinity than toward earthly introspection. Some parallels with the structure of the vocabulary developed by the Irish trio can also be found in 65daysofstatic or Maserati, through a shared use of synthetic, technological phonemes to flesh out the idiomatic picture.

Their 2003 debut, The End Of The Beginning, lays down the guidelines that would define, albeit with differing nuances, the subsequent chapters of their still-brief career: "From Dust To Beyond" (a hazy mare clausum in which harmony creates a state of subcutaneous excitement that never quite detonates), "Ascend To Oblivion" (a perfect wordless post-wave song), "Coda" (a lush inflorescence of extremely shifting sonic colors), "Fall From The Stars" (among the moments with the greatest dynamic range), "Route 666" (which, especially on stage, becomes a kind of anthem) — these are episodes that, while remaining confined to a formal composure rather hemmed in rhythmically and closed off to genuine surprises, betray authentic emotions that go beyond too neatly drawn boundaries and scene transitions timed to the tenth of a second. The underlying softness that defines it is its main limitation.

Two years is what the trio needs to figure out what works and what doesn't in their sound, which continues to call for a more instinctive expressive urgency: God Is An Astronaut can sense this too from the somewhat lukewarm reviews, yet even on the new album All Is Violent, All Is Bright (2005), the filter remains that of a meticulous production, one that stretches out the dynamics and, above all, layers the sounds, running them through an electronic sieve.

The overall alchemy becomes more personal and introspective: although tracks like the opening Fragile and Forever Lost, with their piano tolls, layers of synth and guitar runs, seem traceable back to Mogwai's "Happy Songs For Happy People", there's a sense that some maturation has taken place, and that the fruit of this "maceration of ideas" now has a more penetrating flavour. The title track, right from its name, is the manifesto of this new state of mind, fully engaging in its cathartic, climbing momentum, growing in intensity minute by minute. "Fire Flies And Empty Skies" (forever torn between a guitar-oriented and a synth-driven sound, and a riot live) and "Suicide By Stars" is a quiet magnetic disturbance caused by a radiant solar wind.

In conclusion, the lengthy "When Everything Dies" aims to definitively convince us that these post-rock-smitten lads have thoroughly plumbed their own capabilities to draw out the very best of what they're capable of: and so they gift us a mini-suite opened by piano, developing a notion of progression that doesn't want to rely on the usual alternation between silence and bursts of energy, but instead proceeds by thickening electrical charges, adding detail upon detail, particular upon particular, right up to the final emotional climax. There's no doubt about the evocative pull that the music of All Is Violent, All Is Bright manages to exert, but it's equally true that a degree of uncertainty persists between its brooding (ambient?) soul and its more properly rock-psychedelic one.

Before putting together a new studio work, the Irish band decide to stop halfway across the ford to work out what to leave on one bank and how to shape the shore on which they'll land: their 2006 EP A Moment Of Stillness (five tracks in its original form, expanded into a fully-fledged album for the tenth-anniversary reissue, running to 37 minutes) contains some of the most luminous sonic frescoes the band has ever painted. The opener "Frozen Twilight" is without doubt the pivotal piece that redefines the coordinates of that luminous way of developing melodies which the trio has become masters of: rarely have other bands within the post-rock sphere managed to make purely instrumental pieces resemble actual songs so closely. Arabesque arpeggios seem stitched onto fine synth carpets, while the drums fall in line with the spiralling ascent. In this desire to break free from earthly ground and rise towards the lights of some astral distance lies the spiritual tension underpinning these compositions, because that is precisely the elevated terrain where the band chooses to play and to dwell.

Immersing oneself in these shimmering waters, with their sometimes dazzling reflections, continues to produce a state of engagement, albeit one no longer tinged with surprise, along with a genuine admiration for a band that manages so candidly - amid an army of other clones - to realise this musical metaphor for an image centred on a web, fragile and exposed to wind and rain, without glorifying the dynamics by which a spider engineers its lethal home, but simply weaving the poetry of the delicate balance between life and death, inspiration and abyss.

Surrendering to "Grace Ascending", and to their 2007 album as a whole, Far From Refuge (which builds on the intuitions gathered on the EP), is like letting oneself be lulled by a gentle tide of similar fascinations: the album sets out to perform an extreme exercise in broadening one's horizons from not-particularly-favourable vantage points, from narrow slits, without any fear of being contradicted by critics capable of spotting the limited scope of music born from an unconditional love of "post-rock-in-the-classic-sense" tropes. But God Is An Astronaut do exactly as they please, and the results of this carefree approach come through loud and clear, starting with the significant title track, one of the finest pieces in their whole discography, whose very reason for being lies precisely in this: building a splendour that keeps growing, in a way that's hopelessly, dramatically enthralling, and just as unmistakably identifiable as "post-rock".

Even the album's high point, "Tempus Horizon", pours all its revelation into this extremely refined, heavy, thoughtful, pulsing urge to radiate colours, flavours and light, and to shout to the world all the pride of being free while still bound to a clear-cut identity. One could almost coin an ad hoc term for God Is An Astronaut: venturing a guess, we might call it cinematic-cyber-progressive-psychedelia. But that would just be dancing around the issue. What we're talking about here is "post-rock" - I mean the "post-rock box", the box with "post-rock" written on it, which goes from being the container to being the content itself. And listening to post-rock music, assuming such a singular thing even exists, becomes a bit like saying "I'm having a can of Coke": obviously you're not drinking the can (i.e. the container) but what's inside it (the Coke itself, even when it might actually be a Pepsi). Post-rock, like progressive rock, is just a metonymy, a container that has risen to the role of symbol for a music that perhaps doesn't even exist. What's certain is that God Is An Astronaut have become craftsmen of unusual skill in shaping this container, giving liquids that have been "in circulation" for decades unique and, in many respects, fascinating new forms. As is certainly the case with the close of Far From Refuge, entrusted to the sweeping notes of the gripping "Beyond The Dying Light".

Just a year later - we're in 2008 now - God Is An Astronaut suddenly shift gears, for the first time in their career and in such a decisive way, ceasing to make post-rock (or worse, post-post-rock) and becoming a band that plays rock with no prefixes or suffixes attached. Still an entirely instrumental rock, indissolubly tied to cinematic suggestions, but sweated out to the bone, never detached, never self-satisfied or self-indulgent, never aloof: for their fourth album, the self-titled God Is An Astronaut, the lads from Glen Of The Downs started playing for real, abundantly, with real body, moving through a full and complete compositional phase that gave their melodies proper room to breathe, rather than assuming they'd work just because of some well-placed, effects-laden electronics. This time there's no ambiguity, no winking at the audience: here the inspiration has been followed through honestly, without the trick of filters or the hunt for perfect timbres.

For some strange reason the overall picture, by now immune to the Mogwai effect, appears in certain respects not unlike the approach of 65daysofstatic, even though in their case the electronic make-up is anything but sparing. The impetuous tracks, rich in psychedelic impressions, all find a perfect place in a mosaic designed so that no tile is out of position. The bursts of energy in "Shadows" become walls of emotional waves in the radiant "Echoes", releasing electric flashes throughout the superb "Post Mortem": all that energy seems to unwind in "Snowfall", to the point of becoming inner peace in "First Day Of Sun", only to regain intensity in "No Return", turning once more into dazzling electric charge in "Zodiac". And then onward to the photovoltaic structures of "Shores Of Orion" and the Faraday cage formed by the closing "Loss".

This change, however, was not well received by the band's earliest supporters.

On an artistic journey, only those who remain open to change truly "live": the rest, at best, merely survive, or at most just get by. And it can't be said that the Irish band didn't try to open itself up to a transformation.

It was only fair, though, to wait and see what came next, to understand whether with Age Of The Fifth Sun (2010) the band had decided to indulge the longtime fans, smitten with their orderly, graceful take on the post-rock verb, suspended between subtle electronics and an emotional charge that never fully erupted, or whether they would continue to delight those who loved the vigorous turn towards the psychedelic rock of God Is An Astronaut. True to the nature of their own music, which never proposes clean breaks, the Kinsella brothers' group tries to find a middle path on the map between the two approaches, reclaiming the legacy of two excellent works like All Is Violent, All Is Bright (2005) and Far From Refuge (2007), both attributable to more restrained stylistic traits, while infusing them with all the drive that had characterised the previous album. Many of the electronically brooding moments that had been partly set aside recently are recovered here, intersected with the helical trajectories of shards that are decidedly less post and very, very rock: among the hybrids that emerge, worth noting are both the phantasmagoric "In The Distance Fading" and the jolting "Parallel Highway". But perhaps the perfect synthesis of these two approaches lies precisely in the dazzling title track, both full-blooded and spiritual at once, iridescent and dark to its very core. The atmospheres expand, though always kept vivid by an underlying unease: from the final three minutes of the opening "Worlds In Collision" springs this notion of an immanent, deeply intimate cosmos that then echoes in the rippling melancholy of "Shining Through" and finds its centre of gravity in the sublime "Dark Rift". The farewell is still sky-high, or perhaps simply otherworldly: "Paradise Remains" leaves us, somewhat dazed, in this vast perspectival void.

So which force prevails on Age Of The Fifth Sun? The densely ecstatic one, or the electrically telluric one? The music on this album doesn't resolve this dilemma - and doesn't even try to. It feels, once again, like the soundtrack to a journey, though this time one intent on capturing both the movement and the moments of rest.

The live dimension is certainly the habitat in which the trio - a quartet since 2011, with the addition of Jamie Dean lending a hand on keyboards and piano - manages to express itself most fully: buoyed by a truly breathtaking lightshow, God Is An Astronaut's photonic symphonies take on a whole new life, one in which the strengthening of the more suspended passages never gives way to a wall of sound capable of numbing the audience. If anything, listeners are roused and drawn in to follow every single detail, every passage, through an even more dynamic interplay between the instruments and a heightening of the rhythms. A band capable of measuring itself and knowing how to opt for delicate balances: that's what God Is An Astronaut are. Other bands with half their explosive potential might deliver performances marked by "unsettling, try-hard bombast". Not them: order before chaos, harmony above impact. Discipline as an antidote to every form of indiscipline. With all the implications that may follow from that.

The following album, Origins (2013), features an expanded five-piece line-up with the important support of Pat O'Donnell of Fountainhead. He lends a hand with composition, as well as guitars, keyboards and, on a few tracks, even vocals, his voice, treated with various effects, becoming itself an additional instrument. Also among the guests are Donal McGuiness on trombone and Kevin Foran on trumpet, who make the sound even richer and fuller.

Once again the melodic writing retains its refined taste and nocturnal sweetness, with guitars playing between harmonies and "sonic" impulses over carpets of piano, synth and understated electronics. Origins presents twelve tracks as intense as a striking aurora borealis, hinting at a live show that must be even more engrossing, with lighting effects, video and other multimedia elements that, as the quintet themselves suggest, should leave audiences utterly spellbound.

While waiting for the next kaleidoscopic show, this fine comeback keeps the imagination fed in the meantime.

In 2018 came Epitaph, dedicated by the band to the memory of a close relative who passed away prematurely, holding onto the anguish and lacerations of loss, feelings expressed mainly through piano arpeggios interwoven with classic guitar lines, the bare bones of electronic instrumentation, and searing distortion with post-metal/doom overtones. A telling example is the title track that opens the album, which through the balance of these elements develops a progression expressing a sense of dissolution and dramatic inevitability, yet never overwrought or grating.

The riffs and chord progressions, as well as the electric guitar tone influenced by the productions of Isis and Russian Circles, saturate the space occupied by the melodic lines, lines reminiscent of the mathematical (post-)rock of Appleseed Cast and Polvo.

Among the most interesting solutions are the songs' endings, which seek an escape route from the genre's typical climax formula - a standout being the one in "Winter Dusk/Awakening" - along with elements almost alien to the band's characteristic sound, such as the bassline of "Mortal Coil", which even winks at early Muse, the electronic evolution of "Seance Room", or the near-ambient pulse of "Komorebi".

If on one hand the band introduces several new elements compared to previous albums, especially in the arrangements, on the other hand those very novelties draw on solutions already adopted by other groups, with little that's personal (or original) about them.

The Kinsella brothers' tenth studio album arrives under the aegis of Napalm Records. Ghost Tapes #10 (2021) accentuates the harder, more metallic side of their sound, brushing up against post-metal territory. An early taste of this comes with the single "Burial", with its dark atmospheres further heightened by the effective video directed by the collective Chariot of Black Moth. The pounding overture of "Adrift" takes flight on interlocking, razor-sharp guitar riffs, only briefly softened by melancholy piano chimes, while the distorted "In Flux" plays with lopsided time signatures and sudden shifts in rhythm.

"Spectres" is more reflective, but without giving up the incisive riffs that are the band's trademark, which turn even more distorted and searing on the second single, "Fade", with its near-noise shadings. Guitarist Jimmy Scanlan lends his contribution to "Barren Trees", also stamped with Jamie Dean's atmospheric synths, which link into the closing act on the magnetic notes of "Luminous Waves".

While Somnia (2022) repackages previously released ambient-toned compositions, giving space to a fundamental but often overlooked component of the band's sound, Embers (2024) returns firmly to the comfort zone of quiet/loud. At this point, anyone who has followed the Irish outfit for a while knows exactly what to expect from a new release: instrumental textures, reverb and shimmering guitars, the occasional metallic surge, swirling interplay of release and grandeur. The eleventh LP is no exception, and it doesn't disappoint expectations (nor, for that matter, does it upend them).

The dynamic, shapeshifting nature of the tracks doesn't translate into a similarly varied tracklist: amid atmospheric intros, shadowy layering, muscular passages and sudden bursts of light, songs like "Odyssey", "Oscillation" and the title track are essentially interchangeable. Satisfying, well-crafted, but ultimately overlapping in form and feeling.

Paradoxically, it's some of the less kaleidoscopic episodes that manage to stand out a little. One example is "Heart Of Roots", which, building up gradually from its evocative opening bassline, never quite reaches a true explosion. But the steadier calm of closer "Hourglass" also hits the mark, as does the earlier "Prism", one of two tracks on the album featuring London cellist Jo Quail (who has previously worked with Caspian, Mono, Laniakea).

If God were an astronaut, a navigator of the stars, God Is An Astronaut might just get hired to score the soundtracks for his journeys.

Contributions by Maria Teresa Soldani ("Epitaph"), Marco Sgrignoli ("Embers")

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