7″ Dark Blue Vinyl, Drone Records, 2009
melanchoholics.de
Every once in so many times you keep hearing a name and you get intrigued. But time and money fail to hunt things down to see why it intrigues you, and if the hunch you had was true. This is sort of the situation with The Melanchoholics for me.
I had seen their name a couple of times in mail orders around the web, and some information and promotion on, among others, the Drone Records mailing list (a great source of information for the droney part of the experimental scene), but I never had the chance to check them out; until this thick piece of deep blue vinyl was delivered, that is.
Their style is being mentioned on discogs as ‘Dark Ambient, Post Rock, Lo-Fi, Psychedelic Rock’, and these tracks would fit that description indeed quite well, except maybe for the psychedelic rock part.
The first side is entitled “Like Thunderstorms in July” and is built from guitar sounds as well as accordion. It emphasizes the lo-fi and post-rock descriptions. “Message for the Operator”, on the other side of the record, continues the style and atmospheres from the first track, but here a definite layer of ‘psychedelica’ is added. The voice on this track should be ‘recognizable for the experienced’ (promo sheet) but I am not as experienced as it may seem. It sounds like Swedish or Japanese to me, and there it ends (admitting my ignorance).
The Melanchoholics prove to be a refreshing addition to music in general.
[8/10]
— Bauke van der Wal