Hypomanie – Calm Down, You Weren’t Set On Fire (2012)

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The one man musical factory of Hypomanie returns this 2012 with its most ethereal and dreamy sounding release to date: “Calm Down, You Weren’t Set On Fire”. With such a puzzling title, this release delivers six tracks of pure aural depression that delivers very well crafted Blackgaze elements merged into more traditional Post-Rock structures of bands like God is an Astronaut and such.

With the dreamy opening provided by “19 Starts and the Sweet Smell of Cinnamon”, this release starts very well with lush guitars and an excellent atmosphere. The production behind this release sounds a bit off since the guitars sound funky and too high pitched sometimes, other than this little detail everything else sound great. The band’s change into a more Post-Rock oriented outfit is clearly evident in tracks like “Alissa Loves Perfume” and “If Only the Seas Were Merciful”. On “If Only..” the band still features some Black Metal influences in their Shoegazing guitars, keeping them a bit on par with their previous release.

In a more Post-rock-ish nature, “Lullabye For Ian” features a nice and depressive mood, but the ‘percussions’ sound very crappy, completely mixed over the rest of the elements making them a tad annoying. Once the ethereal distorted guitars kick in, they go away and save this song (until they come back again). This song is probably one of the best in the release, but it is too bad that is was ruined by this element.

On the aggressive side of things, “Pale Blue” delivers an intense 8 minute experience of the traditional build-up then release then more build-up approach that most Post-Rock releases have, but here everything is darker and more aggressive in a way. Closing up the release we have the very climactic “You Never Listened to the Birds”, a proper ending for such a diverse mood release.

We have to say that while “Calm Down, You Weren’t Set On Fire” is a very decent release, there is a lot lacking in the production department (or is this intentional?). The percussions are very weirdly mixed and sometimes sound very bad, the guitars sound a bit strange the louder you play this release (and we review on a top of the line audio system). Hypomanie is making a conversion to more ‘accepted’ realms of music (Post-Rock, etc) and their process is quite interesting indeed, we would love to see what they do in their next release and how their sound changes.

Band: Hypomanie Album: Calm Down, You Weren’t Set On Fire
Label: Valse Sinistre Records

Release: March 9th, 2012

Oficial Site myspace
Genre: Shoegaze / Post-Rock

Country: Netherlands

Rating: 85/100
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