Light Veins' Wasteland EP doesn't just come across as a typical post-rock music experience, but rather a more involved and more thought-out musical journey that takes us across visions of dystopian universes.
Across the five tracks offered here, Light Veins utilize their talents and ideas to feature what can only be described as a very cinematic experience. Wasteland might only be a short taster of what Light Veins has to offer when it comes to the post-rock genre, but they certainly do deliver a great amount.
Wasteland is a thoroughly dark experience, revelling in the more mysterious and creepy atmospheres built up in the music. Light Veins present us with a varying range of images and emotions from the story they build up in the music, none of which is ever hopeful, but all of which is very indulgent.
We're treated to various little soundscapes and effects, accompanied by various post-rock motifs which all contribute to a very strong album. For the most part it's all very subtle, and certainly more enjoyable than the more typical post-rock efforts we see from time to time. There's just so much going on with Wasteland, which moves from chapter to chapter, offering distortion and ominous movements that present the story so clearly.
Little motifs here and there work so well in changing the atmosphere that little bit to keep the story going. In fact any band who can use an old internet modems' dial-up tone and utilize it to make their music stronger (in this case, third track 'Absence') is certainly a band with the creative ideas that make for good music. We can argue that Wasteland is perhaps a little bit too subtle, especially in the beginning, where it takes a little while for Light Veins to really come into their own. When they do though, boy does it work!
Light Veins might have produced a short EP with Wasteland but it's a fantastic offering into their own branch of atmospheric post-rock music. There's some really subtle ambient tracks that certainly inspire fear (Track.2, 'Wasteland'), whilst others manage to pump everything up and really go for it (Track.4, 'Looking Glass'). There's certainly a generous amount on offer here, which is all we really need to want more from Light Veins in the future.
