Review Summary: 1099 deliver yet another original and solid post-rock record that stands out of the genre.
1099 is an independent post-rock band from Trondheim, Norway. With their tremendous eponymous album in 2013, they manage to impose themselves as a very interesting post-rock act that, if it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, manage to make it turn better than ever with their unique heavy and melodic sound. Two years after their last album, they are back with a new effort, Young Pines.
Those who follow the band on social network noticed that 1099 have been posting one song from the record every week for nearly two months until the official release of Young Pines so the record comes as no surprise. Nonetheless, the fans of the band were firmly waiting for the new effort by the Scandinavian band and probably weren’t disappointed when they release their first song back in December, Memfis. In the first seconds, we recognize the loud, heavy, rhythmic sound that characterize 1099. This with the traditional melodic leitmotiv gives them their own post-rock sound and their to-the-point structure is clearly visible and is what makes them unique. Yeager kicks in right after and is probably the most typical post-rock song of the album. Melodic post-rock structure with heavy drums and bass and spaced repetitive guitars. Not a bad song, but not the one that stands out either.
It’s with Palatine Light, the fourth song and the first of three epic 10+ minutes song, that the album really starts kicking in. We still found the beautiful melody and rhythms, but the structure is much more complex, thanks to a couple of beautifully placed shift. The melodic leitmotivs are still there, but in a really dark and ambient mood and, with the help of the grainy and aggressive sounding bass line, construct a 10 minutes epic that stands out of the album at the first listen.
The second epic song of the album is called Krystallfabrikken and starts with two and a half minutes of noisy and ambient drone sound before beautiful piano comes in. Just like with Palatine Light, there is a structure much more complex and interesting that most typical post-rock group. The guys from 1099 doesn’t take the easy way to deliver and never hesitate to experiment with noise, loud distortion and weird sound in a song that wouldn’t suffer the comparison to bands like
Godspeed You Black Emperor!
The third and last epic, Hjorten, closes the albums with a much more mellow, melodic and melancholic sound all at once. Not as complex as the other ones, it’s still a beautiful piece of work that reminds us of the Rock Action / Come on die young
Mogwai sound. This is a wonderful way to close the album and, while we can’t say that it’s as memorable as their precedent effort, it’s still a wonderful post-rock piece of art that deserves multiple listens and that confirms us that 1099 is indeed a band to follow.
