Ready to get your introspection on? Let Last Days’ Satellite be your soundtrack. On his fourth release, Graham Richardson burrows into the listener’s soul with a set of pieces that straddle the line between electro-acoustic ambient and quiet post-rock. It’s an album where the smallest sounds matter as much as the larger ones, and the blend creates some serious emotional impact. This is a well-made exercise in pairing straightforward melodies with disparate, contrasting sonic touches–rough edges that challenge the listener while they are attempting to connect with the comparative simplicity of the music beneath. “Escape Velocity” is a great example. While Richardson slowly plays, the constant crackle and muffled roar of a rocket engine during takeoff plays out in the background. In “After the Flood” a 50/50 balance is tenuously struck between water sounds, which border on being too loud, and a beautiful post-rock song that comes in first on strings and then adds guitar. Here the treatment feels like it’s staying in touch with the theme. It’s the way in which the water sounds are vying for attention, rather than settling in as background, that ramps up the interest level. This is not a place where the edges of the two sides of the equation are harshly rubbing against each other. For that, listen to the way a metallic grinding, not unlike the overamplified sound of a subway train, works its way into and eventually takes over the melody in “Expecting Miracles.” By the time the track is done, the softer side, the acoustic and musical side, has been overwhelmed by its opposite and just disappears. These are the balances and imbalances at play on Satellite, and Richardson handles them with grace, understanding, and subtlety.

The music here is moody and inescapably sad, but it’s not an off-putting sadness. Rather, it’s a common, shared sadness, a feeling that appeals to that portion in all of us that is willing to embrace this state of being. We’ve been here, and Richardson is just putting a sound to it. This is about looking back the way you came and trying to understand how you got here and what you may have left behind. Satellite has a very human resonance; it presents its own frailty openly and honestly, which is why it works so very well. Put the headphones on, brace your soul, and have a go.

Available from n5md.

While I’m not inclined to burn a lot of words on a 4-song release that skates by in under 30 minutes, Umbrose’s debut, Final Nights, is worth bringing to your attention. It’s something of a showcase release, giving the listener four sides of Umbrose’s musical personality. The opener, “How Many Winters,” would lead you to believe this is something of a New Age disc. Rain, a wolf howl, then strings, flute and keys set the tone. Light electronics fill in the background and a beat with some tribal pedigree knocks out a tempo. It’s the vocal drop-in late in the track that suggests this isn’t a by-the-numbers New Age outing. And with the first rap of the snare drum on “Crushed Like Velvet (Velour),” it’s confirmed. Now we’re in a somewhat jazz-infected space. The drum plays a simple, slogging beat as a piano offers a half-awake tune. A woman’s voice slips out of a dreamspace and into our hazy awareness. Melancholy drips onto the floor. Again, don’t get comfy. Those are warped carnival music sounds you hear as “MMN” opens, but they give way to an even more stupor-draped chunk of post-rock. Some of the sound here is muddy, dimmed and fading, half here and half not. Then there’s my favorite track, the one that takes the disc to a completely different and quite unexpected place. “The Crying Mask” is an insanely catchy thing that’s basically the theme music for a lost 50s B-movie about spies and aliens, with a surfing contest thrown in for good measure. Wailing theremin sound, snappy snare drum, groovy licks on dirty guitar… If you don’t hear just a little hint of the rockin’ theme from The Munsters, well…it’s probably just that you’re younger than I. But it’s there. And it’s cool.

On their Facebook page, Umbrose notes themselves as a “dark ambient” act. If this is dark ambient, it’s really light dark ambient. It’s moody, for sure, and draped in gloom, but overall it’s too bright in tone for that designation. No dark ambient rocks out the way “Crying Mask” does. Whatever you want to call it, Final Nights is a solid, fun and interesting debut that makes me look forward to something longer from Umbrose. Have a listen.

Available at Bandcamp.

Olekranon is back to douse his listeners in his well-practiced blend of raw-edged industrial, aggressive noise and meaty post-rock. This is Danaus, and it would probably like to hurt you. Or hypnotize you. Or a bit of both. Ryan Huber handles both aspects well. When he gets his aggro on and lays in with beats that feel like they’re being meted out via machine press, Danaus takes on a huge, bellicose aspect. It snarls and spits and vents–walk into the beating that is “Bellow,” for example. Metallic clatter, thick distortion, and beats that literally punch. Throw in a vocal drop that gets crushed underfoot and you’ve got a signature Olekranon piece. When he piles on hissing drones in massive layers, the resultant cliff-face of sound becomes hypnotic, a rough-hewn susurrus that forcibly lulls you into a trance space. I like “Severed” for this; it shows how Huber can effect that dronescape and still work in texture and punch. A variation on this theme comes again on the next track, “Marionette,” with the additional allure of being built on a pretty straightforward post-rock frame. A follow-along beat, an identifiable melody via chords, and that big hissing brain-shower. “Libertine,” which closes the album, is a perfect blend of white-noise drone and a steady, almost subtle beat. A subliminal groove, if you will. As the album moves along, the line between beat(ings) and mesmerizing washes blurs and shifts so that regardless of where you are, you are engulfed in Huber’s soundpool and taken out of your normal flow.

Olekranon’s work is not the easiest to get into, but I find that I’ve developed a taste for it. I appreciate the restrained aggression, the way there’s always a path through the sound even at its densest, and the carefully paced-out shifts of tone. It’s always worth giving a close listen because Huber is not a noise-for-noise’s-sake artist. Get down into the details and take in what Danaus is offering. The effort is worth it.

Available at Bandcamp.