Nihiti

With For Ostland, Nihiti have created a diverse and complex sophomore album that defies categorisation. "Siobhan's Song For Jakob" opens the album with a vortex of looping drone, but is followed by a surprising cover of dream-folk singer Marissa Nadler's "Ghosts and Lovers," made all the darker with the hum of feedback and a reverb-heavy, four-on-the-floor pulse. With its electroacoustic experimentation, subtle melodies and highly textured, sample-laden soundscapes and percussive instrumentation, Nihiti successfully marry an accessible pop sensibility with the static fuzz and ambience of late IDM. Gothic elements are combined with pop and rock structures, Lanois-esque guitar parts and the industrial clang of Mika Vainio. For Ostland is a satisfying album of unsettling, dark ambience, post-rock, drone and experimental noisescapes that evokes This Heat, Swans and Apparat in equal measure. With tracks ranging in length from less than 30 seconds to almost nine minutes and songs straddling several genre boundaries, the end result is deliciously disorienting.