I bought this at the wonderful and now very defunct 2010 version of the Cumulus Music Festival. Three days of pretty much all-instrumental, post rock bands. Fun for music nerds!

Aristeia brings a dark instrumental metal on this promo CDr. A little Pelican, a little Russian Circles. They hang out mostly in straight 4/4 time and get a little sleepy without some interesting technical changes. I mean, this is as close as us suburban punks get to classical, so maybe they could also benefit from some shiny production values or a less muddy DIY recording, as well?

The songs, again, are not super technical but are nice and flowing with enough changes to hold interest (I mean, they're not a drone band, that's for sure). They have decent builds and structure, they just need a bit more to lift the songs up from background of a creepy movie to something more special. The second half of the 10 minute track 2 gets nearly there with the addition of a piano layer throwing in both a melodic twist and a contrast to the bass-heavy darkness that precedes it for 6 minutes. There's also some shredding guitar dueling in the last two minutes of Black Magic Hour that mix up the formula of just doing a riff for a bit and then doing another one that seems to be the standard for the rest.

I recall their live set being a highlight of that day of the festival, so maybe it is just this recording letting us down a bit. Unfortunately it seems very difficult to get any other of their material and they are probably not playing again any time soon, so nostalgia will have to do for me for now, I suppose.

If you like this review, you can buy me a coffee.