Meniscus - Refractions

by Paul Waller

published: 18 / 7 / 2017

$Meniscus - Refractions$

Label: Bird’s Robe Records
Format: CD

Hard-to-define third full-length album from instrumental and early post-rock influenced Australian group Meniscus

Review

If this was the first time that you hear Meniscus you would think that the sole reason for their formation was in order that they could be added to the bill of the ArcTanGent festival. That is until you find out that these Australian post-rockers have been knocking about for neigh on twelve years, over double the length of the festival's tenure. Listening today I feel like I’ve time travelled back to a simpler musical landscape. An age when Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky were delivering fresh takes on instrumental music, building gentle guitar-based refrains into giant soundscapes with crashing crescendos. It’s as if time has stood still over the passing years and whilst it’s fair to say that tracks such as ‘Head Rush’ and ‘Overhang’ break away a little it’s only enough to create a little light and shade on this particular record. The problem is that you can take ‘Refractions’ in a couple of ways. The first is that the band are lazy and aping a sound from a particular point in time that has already been covered to death by literally hundreds of bands. The other take is that this album holds its own with ‘Young Team’ and ‘The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place’ and simply adds another great piece of art within post-rock history. I myself can not decide.