With its gorgeous artwork, dynamic post-rock structures and gorgeous production, oscillation is the third album from Swedish outfit Oh Hiroshima. Some four years in the making, the album is a densely layered and hypnotic body of work, given a final gloss by the legendary Magnus Lindberg (Cult of Luna, Heads, Final Coil), who lent his mastering skills to the record. Featuring seven tracks, oscillation sees the three-piece once again pushing the boundaries as to what is perceived possible within the confines of post-rock and the results are frequently astounding.
Opening with neu, a hazy, ethereal track characterised by Jakob Hemstrom’s shimmering guitar, Oh Hiroshima waste little time adding Simon Axelsson’s sanguine bass and Oskar Nilsson’s forthright drums to the mix, recalling early Mogwai, wherein ambient pieces would often explode into metallic life (Like Herod) before collapsing in upon themselves once more in a hail-storm of feedback and echoing noise. With clean vocals reminiscent of Seafood and even Snow Patrol before they fell into studied blandness, the band deftly layer guitars upon guitars, whipping up quite a storm in the process and belying the song’s near-six-minute run-time. Echoing piano underpinned by an awkwardly beating heart opens the subtle, beautiful A handful of dust, a track that takes its time to coalesce around a direct melody. The vocals, fragile and haunting, reflect the gossamer-fine structuring of the song and when harmonies are introduced, they recall the stately beauty of Low. The second half of the track, however, takes a more direct approach as Oskar introduces a tough beat that brings the listener back from the web of sleep in which they find themselves, and the guitars are finally let off the leash and allowed to fill the void with glorious noise. With its taut, heavily reverbed intro, Simulacra tips a nod towards David Gilmour’s heavily driven intro to run like hell, Oh Hiroshima building the tension with creeping bass and idiosyncratic percussion before finally allowing the track to explode into life. Lengthy and breathlessly exciting thanks to the band’s ability to continuously build on the foundations they lay down, Simulacra is an album highlight that paves the way neatly for the melancholic moderate spectre, a piece that has much in common with the heavier end of Sigur Ros’ output. Heart breaking and impactful, moderate spectre highlights the band’s rare ability to take a simple melody and, by weaving layer upon layer of gorgeous noise over it, turn it into something truly mesmerising.
With the previous track having ended in a swirl of dense riffing, Darkroom Aesthetics arrives with Simon’s taut, distorted basslines, over which Jakob builds the song, piece by piece, looping guitar figures into a hypnotic melange that eventually winds down to the music-box simplicity of In Solar, a gentle piece that the band allow to unfold gracefully around Oskar’s metronomic beat. A truly gorgeous piece of music, as heartbreaking as anything on come on die young, the vocals, when they eventually appear, are perfectly understated, whilst cello adds an air of genuine melancholy that is soon swept away by the churning guitars of the finale. The album ends with cinematic masterpiece Molnet, a ten-minute epic that builds a sense of genuine tension thanks to the restrained, yet dynamic percussion with which it opens. With considerable weight allowed to flourish within the guitars, it is a fitting and frequently explosive conclusion to a truly mesmerising album.
Layers of guitar, understated vocals and moments of genuine tension make for an enthralling listen and Oh Hiroshima do much to evolve the post-rock format, making greater use of vocals than their contemporaries and resisting the temptation to drift too far into the ether at the expense of a memorable melody. The production is perfect, allowing each element to shine through an often complex mix and the band’s use of dynamic is masterful. In a genre where innovation has all-too-often been abandoned in favour of imitation, Oh Hiroshima have carved out their own unique space and delivered an album that is heart-breakingly beautiful. 8.5/10
