This Will Destroy You – Tunnel Blanket

Technological innovation continues, inexorably, to undermine the magic of musical discovery. Since we learned that time-stretching can render even Justin Bieber’s music achingly poignant, the mystique of bands like This Will Destroy You has inevitably lessened. The Texan four-piece produce the kind of glacial, delay-soaked post-rock that sounded genuinely otherworldly back on Mogwai’s Helicon 1 in the mid-90s, but today can all too often feel indulgent and lumpen.

Tunnel Blanket, for much of its hour-long duration, manages to avoid these pitfalls. TWDY accomplish this by taking their cues from the epic narratives of doom and black metal as much as the ambient soundscapes of Sigur Rós. At their best, the resulting compositions achieve the intensity of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s crescendos, but retain an amorphousness that prevents them lapsing into cliché. It may be hard to generate mystique these days, but TWDY are more capable than most of doing so. [Sam Wiseman]