Atmospheric post-rock with lengthy drone sections, tons of audio effects and simple but powerful drums? Yes, please! Emptylakes is a solo project of Brandon Paskel from Harleysville, Pennsylvania. We have no idea what’s the weather there like, but we know that storm clouds appeared above us as soon as we started playing the epic digital-only release “Always Present, Never Future”.

The record features just four tracks but they span over 40 minutes. With not a second wasted, Emptylakes throws us into his world with the massive and drifting opener “The Vigorous, The Unnecessary, 33.3128N, 44.2615E”. It’s a beast of a track that undergoes several different metamorphoses. From loud and epic sections to spacey passages with generously delayed hypnotic melodies until it all again climaxes in a loud wall of noise. This is the general structure that Brandon follows throughout the record and still, the music does never sound generic or expected. Two of the tracks are beyond the 15 minutes mark, the other ones are shorter but not less dynamic and challenging. Our only recommendation would be a better-mixed drum section and even thicker guitar sound. This music needs to be recorded as good as possible, heard as loud as possible, because, you know, it’s just too good.

What we really liked about “Always Present, Never Future” is that the album never stays on one place – neither musically, neither emotionally. The sound and mood throughout the whole record goes from pure darkness to total transcendence and its 40+ minutes pass in a blink of an eye. One second you’re there and the next one you’re dragged out by the fragile piano at the end of the closing piece ‘It Has Exhausted Us, It Has Stalled”. We can’t wait to hear more!