I will admit to the fact I am not usually seeking out post-rock releases, but once one reaches me I can dive right in and go with the flow, enjoying every moment of it. Or, alternatively, I can’t wait for the drag to be over. This depends largely on whether music hooks me from the get-go. French Year of No Light, a completely unknown entity for me, did just that with Ausserwelt, just like Nadja, Dark Castle and Souvenir’s Young America have done before them.

In 48 minutes and four movements of instrumental sonic depth the Frenchmen captivated my attention non-stop, and that is a huge complement, not because it was my attention, but because it is not easy to do. Ausserwelt is a collection of lush, sonorous, soaring landscapes unfolding mostly at deliberate glacial pace (Perséphone I), but sometimes picking up speed. Tribal beat can shift to buried hidden blasts, and melodic strong river can get suddenly ripped up in favor of alarmist, dissonant and almost hurtful moments (Perséphone II), but everything is simply monumental with Year of No Light on this album. They are a colossal glacier coming at you in Perséphone I, but when this nature phenomenon arrives, it stuns with its beauty causing complete stillness. Abbesse opens up with a defining funeral doom chord sequence, only to finish with the deafening descent. Same funeral moments in Hiérophante receive careful inflections just before the tempo picks up somewhat. Then slower pace returns, announcing itself as practically dissolution in the air, some material substance constantly shedding molecules. Reverential synth melodies continue to lift the listener up in the air, finally making us peer into the eyes of some otherworldly entity.

If my review seems unusually short today, it is doubtful I discovered laconic brevity of speech, but describing Ausserwelt in words is very much a futile task. If this slab ever happens to roll your away, make sure you intercept its path to get your aural senses be completely washed over with its epic massive sonic magnificence.