Another Monday only this time to sit alongside the buzz kill of work I’ve got an emergency date with the dentist to add insult to injury. However, post-rock is once again providing a comforting tonic and as I prepare to set sail for summer in less than a week I’m enjoying a volley of offerings from Spain where we’ll be touching shore twice in the coming weeks.

Once again I’ve tried to find a way of summing up the genre and have found this handy yet daft and pretentious explainer: “Post-rock generally applied to bands that used the typical instruments of a rock band—two guitars, a bass, and drums—with nontraditional rhythms, melodies, and chord progressions. Guitars created ambience by altering the colour and quality of the sound. Vocals, if they were included, were frequently treated not as a vehicle for lyrics but as an additional instrument. The focus was on the texture of the music and the sound produced rather than on melodic patterns and the basic structure of a rock song. Embracing “quiet as the new loud,” post-rock shifted away from the hard, male-driven outbursts of rock music as that music became more commercialised; post-rock and other alternative genres were more independent and less commercially oriented.”

I’ve mumbled before about how I love the universality of a genre that doesn’t rely on words and can, accordingly, be created whether those inclined to do so happen to be. Spain, particularly, has proven to be a real treasure chest of great post-rock bands and with a real sense of variety across those. My way into it came by chance when I found the website for AloudMusic – a label and distro operating out of Barcelona and championing all things of alt / post / homegrown bent. I’ve found through my admittedly non-expert ears that the bands from the Catalonia region lean toward the the melodic with bands out of the capital providing some almighty wallop. I’m probably wrong, as much exposure as I try to seek there’s undoubtedly more to learn.

Anyway, here’s today’s selection.

Toundra – Cobra

Probably the most widely-known of Spain’s post-rock bands and bringers of the aforementioned almighty wallop. Toundra hail from Madrid and formed in 2007.

Exxasens – Your Dreams Are My Dreams

Also formed in 2007, Exxasens hail from the beatific Barcelona. What I love about this band are that they typically have a space theme to their albums and that their drummer feels like he’d be equally at home in a hard rock band – I’d like to think that live he beats the shit out of his kit – propelling it along like bloody rocket yet never overpowering it.

Audiolepsia – Brain Fog

Another of those melody-first acts from Barcelona, Audiolepsia lean more toward the soaring guitar end. They’re a couple of albums in and while I picked up Muses from Aloud Music when is was put out with assist from another all-things-post championing label, Dunk!. Their recent Waves and Particles was self-released and picked up via Bandcamp, something which makes me feel like I’m kicking more coin to the band themselves, always a plus.

Jardin De La Croix – Intermareals

These guys come from Madrid and veer – see – toward the heavier, citing themselves as a mix of post-rock, post-hardcore, post-math and post-is-always-late. Maybe not the latter. Five albums in, the latest released on Aloud Music. This is from their 2016 stormer Circadia.

Astralia – Abyss of Night

It’s been a while since Astralia – formed in La Floresta, just outside of Barcelona – have released anything. Their two albums – 2017’s Solstics from which this track is taken and 2014’s Atlas – are great examples of the more ambient end of the genre (I’m not talking panpipe moods, mind, there’s still plenty of clout) and I hope there’s more to come.

Exquirla – Destruidnos Juntos (EN: Destroy Us Together)

Technically this is Toundra, again. Well, sort of. This is what happens when one of Spain’s most crushing post-rock bands finds itself on the same bill as one of the country’s flamenco singers, Niño de Elche. Fittingly – as I’m going to be revisiting the city shortly – the meeting took place in Cadiz. It’s one of those things that on paper doesn’t sound like a winner: the power and intensity of Toundra combined with flamenco singing. As it turns out it’s fucking GOLD. The album Para Quienes Aún Viven (EN: For those who still live) is one of my favourites and I’ll punch this up at home and in the car. I just wish they’d do it again.