God Is an Astronaut - Albums Collection 2002-2010 (6CD) [10th Anniversary Remastered Reissue 2011] Re-Up

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God Is an Astronaut made a strong claim to being the best Irish indie export of the 2000s, thanks to their mix of epic melodies of post-rock, the precision of electronic-fuelled Krautrock à la Tangerine Dream and elements of space rock. The band's status was further boosted by their active anti-war stance and their fierce live performances, which place a lot of emphasis on the visuals: the shows, especially in the band's earlier days, included self-compiled videos for each song and a lot of lighting work. Brothers Torsten and Niels Kinsella (guitar/keyboards and bass/guitars respectively), the group's driving force, come from Glen of the Downs in Wicklow, and played in a number of local bands before teaming up with the drummer Lloyd Hanney, the disciple of the famous jazzman Johnny Wadham, to form God Is an Astronaut, which debuted with the electro-tinged album The End of the Beginning (2002), out on their own label Revive Records. The two singles off the CD, The End of the Beginning and From Dust to the Beyond (both 2003), got airplay on several European MTV channels, same as Fragile (2004), which promoted their second album All Is Violent, All Is Bright (2005). Avoiding the sophomore slump – the record gathered a lot of rave reviews – God Is an Astronaut settled on a steady record schedule, releasing the EP A Moment of Stillness in 2006 and the third album, Far from Refuge, in 2007 (it was also available as a download). Far from Refuge was promoted by a sold-out European tour that reached as far as Moscow and Istanbul, where they played a festival crowd of 25,000. The debut U.S. tour in early 2008, however, was more of a bummer, as the band had all of their equipment stolen in New Jersey. Returning to their home turf, God Is An Astronaut hit the studio again, releasing their fourth album God Is an Astronaut in 2008. Another full-length is scheduled for the second part of 2009.

Biography by Alexey Eremenko, Allmusic.com

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Before they developed into the band we all know today, god was a very different astronaut. Instead of a sound that embodies the traditional post rock leanings with swelling crescendos, God is an Astronaut’s debut possessed a post rock sound that was skillfully combined with space rock. The End of the Beginning happens to be bathed in numerous amounts of synthesizers and features a notably different drumming sound. Even though the characteristics of post rock are all here, the synthesizers and various other effects create vast walls of sound in every song which changes the album’s sound into more of a space rock one. This makes for a more interesting affair compared to some of their later works and those who only know of Origins and their self-titled album are in for quite a ride.

The title track of The End of the Beginning immediately signifies a different type of mood with its hip hop rhythms, euphoric guitar riffs and extra layer of synthesizers providing a soaring wall of sound often found in shoegaze. It creates the sensation of flying through space if the listeners close their eyes and this epitomizes the general vibe of the album pretty well. The title track starts off the album with more of a song like structure and then “From Dust to the Beyond” introduces us to the epic builds and beautiful crescendos that God is an Astronaut is known for. The added layers of synthesizers and overall space rock feel gives the song an epic sound that separates it from their later works respectively. “Ascend to Oblivion” also demonstrates the same type of epic mood, but album highlight “Coda” is where the album really shines. It features one of the best choruses the band has ever created with its compelling drumming and soaring spacey mood. All of these fantastic qualities mentioned here carry throughout most of the album and it remains surprisingly consistent. Even though this album happens to be one of their most creative efforts, the album does run out of steam as we get to the final tracks.

“Coma” proves to be extremely mesmerizing with its swelling synthesizers and beautiful chimes, but it’s a disappointingly short interlude that could have been expanded upon. However, the evidence of running out of ideas to work with really shows in “Route 666.” The song does provide some more engrossing percussion as usual, but in terms of other instrumentation the song really doesn’t go anywhere nor does it provide any notable crescendo. The same can be said for “Lost Symphony” because much like “Route 666,” it exhibits ideas we’ve all heard about thirty minutes ago. The band heavily addressed this problem with their sophomore masterpiece, but it exists as a running problem on their much later works unfortunately.

Despite the album running out of ideas in its final three tracks The End of the Beginning is a very engrossing and varied debut for God is an Astronaut. It showcases some really memorable moments like the touching guitar work in “Point Pleasant” and pretty much the album’s entire first half. This album serves as a fantastic starting point for the band because it will really show the listener how the band will evolve to create the essential post rock album known as All is Violent, All is Bright. Even though the band has clearly run out of ideas in their later works, it’s just nice to know that everyone can always come back to when all of the band’s creativity was at their disposal.

Review by Nick Mongiardo, Sputnikmusic.com

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On their second album, All Is Violent, All Is Bright, Irish instrumental trio God Is an Astronaut continue to create anthem-like tracks suggestive of 1980s alternative rock, but without the vocals. Torsten Kinsella provides atmospheric sounds on his keyboards and keening melodic lines on his guitar, as his bassist brother Niels Kinsela and drummer Lloyd Hanney soon lock in with medium-tempo rock rhythms on tune after tune. The importance of dynamics to the music is paramount, as the tracks tend to gradually rise in intensity, a crescendo building to the midpoint, with the music then falling away and slowly building back up to the finish. Of course, anthems generally have words, but God Is an Astronaut's tunes manage to be stirring and inspiring without a voice to intone lyrics over them. Since there are no vocals, no virtuosic solos, no well-developed melodies, and no steady dance beats, the band gets its instrumental points across by mood, varying the power, volume, and pace within repetitive patterns. It will still sound to many listeners like a music-minus-one experience – U2 without Bono, for example – but that's the point. The God Is an Astronaut musicians are alternative rock purists intent on affecting their audience with the overall sound of their music alone.

Review by William Ruhlmann, Allmusic.com

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Hailing from Ireland, God Is An Astronaut are a three-piece post-rock outfit whose 2006 EP, A Moment of Stillness, somewhat deviates from the typical post-rock album: the five-track EP is barely over twenty-two minutes in runtime, which is rather unusual for a genre that is sometimes associated with longer song lengths. However, the ambient, atmospheric feel that God Is An Astronaut provides is wonderfully executed, with sweeping keyboards, searing synthesizers, and steady guitarwork, but ultimately does not sufficiently distance itself from similar artists.

A Moment of Stillness opens with Frozen Twilight, featuring soft keyboard and synth progressions before being complemented by clean electric guitar. As the introduction unfurls, there is a crescendo - a staple in the post-rock genre - that builds slowly but surely until a cymbal crash and a rollicking, march-like snare roll begins to push the track into more assertive territory. About halfway through the track, the keyboards and synths start to dominate, and combined with the simplistic yet firm guitarline, Frozen Twilight hits its apex before falling to silence, and the clean electric guitar continues its main arpeggiated line. The keyboards and synths are gracefully filtered in, before giving way to A Moment of Stillness in silence. The second track is much more guitar-oriented, and the percussion plays with more of an assured confidence, connecting the different mini-passages through the snare and cymbal. Eventually, the keyboards and synths begin to take over again, while an effect-laden guitar swirls amidst the atmosphere that had been progressively built.

The EP's middle track, Forever Lost (Reprise), begins with synthesizers and piano, and this introduction is one of the most alluring sections on the entire EP. Eventually, the guitars filter in, and the bass guitar plays more of an insistent role on the track for a short while. The track's crescendo is sustained for a few moments with liberal keyboards, synthesizers, and guitar, but then again drops to silence until a swift roll on the snare brings the track and the album back to another crescendo. The track's second crescendo is significantly more amplified, courtesy of a thick synthesizer sound that hits a higher range with each note, but the track again falls into silence.

Elysian Fields and Crystal Canyon bring the album to a close, and are the two shortest tracks on the EP. Both tracks take on the characteristic warm and ambient sensuality exhibited throughout the EP, and are again dominated by a fingerpicked electric guitar played over an ethereal synthesizer progression. The percussion on this album sounds like a baby's mobile, but then timpani rolls are added ever so elegantly before disappearing to abeyance. Crystal Canyon, the finale, is a mere 2:00 in length, and concludes the album with a simple synthesizer and swirling winds.

Overall, A Moment of Stillness is a captivating listen despite its incredibly short length. The EP still contains the prerequisite elements of post-rock, from the ambiance to the instruments, and the crescendos are present here as well. These crescendos, however, are not built with any vigorous authority. This can detract from the listening experience somewhat, but they are nevertheless evident throughout the album. The guitars implement the use of delay and reverb, which enhances the keyboards and synthesizers, and the percussion, when used, acts as a catalyst between movements. The keyboards and especially the piano in the introduction to Forever Lost (Reprise) are splendid, and the synths definitely add an atmospheric dimension to the ambient feel found on the EP. Further, the segues between each track are also distinct: each track begins and concludes in silence. However, at such a laconic length, listeners are encouraged to experience A Moment of Stillness from beginning-to-end in one sitting due to the pacing of the album as well as its length. In the end, the first EP from God Is An Astronaut is a beautiful listen, but can be easily forgotten due to its steadfast homogeneity.

Review by Jom, Sputnikmusic.com

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As any working mother of four from middle England will tell you, drug dealers are a menace to society. They hang around outside school gates waiting for innocent children to come out so they can get them hooked on crack. The first hit will always be free, and then the quality of their items-for-sale will drop off sharply. Before you know it, your little tyke will be hooked, and whatever they buy will never be enough, as it'll never recreate the same first euphoric high they experienced.

While I'm not suggesting the members of God Is An Astronaut have produced an inferior product, it wouldn't have hurt them to put a warning label on their new disc. On their previous albums, Lloyd Hanney (drums, synths) and Niels and Torsten Kinsella (everything else) created music that packed a visceral punch to the senses. Their last album, All Is Violent, All Is Bright, was pretty much the aural equivalent of the finest crystal meth money could buy – it entered your system and set off a depth charge just below the medulla oblongata. It ran rampant through the body, snapping nerve-endings and dominating the emotion centres. But above all - and this is what made it a post-rock masterpiece - its impact on the listener was as instantaneous as it was devastating.

It's that crucial immediate power that's missing from Far From Refuge. By contrast, their new album reveals its pleasures a piece at a time. The emotional rush is still present in parts, but it's not offered up instantly; this time, the listener has to wait for it. The opener, 'Radau', is typical of what to expect over the rest of the album, in sensory reward if not in structure. It arrives on echoing synths, programmed beats and eventually hissing snares that wash into an undulating guitar line that climbs and falls like a bottle bobbing atop choppy waters. The song cuts in and out of calm and stormy passages and then the bottom drops out. Keys, then bass, then guitars push ahead furiously as the frenetic drums lock in behind like a tidal wave rising up fifty stories behind a surfer; then the wave breaks as the drums charge to the fore. By this stage it's all the Kinsella brothers can do to hang on, as Hanney hammers out a punishing drum attack, sounding for all the world like he's playing the kit with six arms. In the end the track delivers, but it takes a while to get there.

And it's this approach that is prevalent through much of the album that may initially put off anyone who had their frontal lobes pulverised by the band's last platter. Far From Refuge is a more staid and, at times, gentler affair than its predecessor, and it requires a degree of patience. The haunting, almost mystical quality of GIAA's sound is all over the disc; ‘Darkfall’ mixes muted synth lines with mournful piano to create an beautiful, if understated, ballad; the title track pulls the listener down into its murky depths, and then bubbles along gently until giant strums pole-axe the song and send it surging towards its urgent conclusion. The closer, 'Beyond The Dying Light', ranks as another high point; guitar lines form a cone of hollow static, and then layer upon layer of effects build until the track breaks in the chorus. It's this build and release effect that GIAA have used to such heady perfection before.

Any album given the unenviable task of following All Is Violent, All Is Bright was always going to suffer by comparisons unless listening to it actually opened a gateway into a fantastical parallel world - revealing not only Hanney's and the Kinsella's real point of origin, but the source of their musical ability. Far From Refuge doesn't do that; it's a compelling listen in its own right, but it's nowhere near as instantly gripping as the band's previous effort. GIAA are probably incapable of making a bad album, but next time round, they shouldn't be so hesitant to go for the throat. And the heart. And everything else, while they're at it.

Review by Nick Cowen, Drownedinsound.com

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If you think Maserati's Inventions for the New Season was polished, you ain't heard nothing yet. God Is an Astronaut are pigeonholed as a post-rock band, and they fit the bill – no vocals, a mostly guitar-based sound, and melodies that float and shift (no proggy shredding here). But this is still a far cry from the trembling ebbs and flows of Explosions in the Sky, to say nothing of Sigur Rós' "Hopelandish" ballads. God Is an Astronaut are an extremely tight unit – tighter than any other bunch of post-rockers, their precision emphasized by their penchant for synthesizers, which has subsided a bit since their debut but never disappeared, their sound actually reminds you a little of an electronica band performing on guitars. Then there's the fact that God Is an Astronaut don't care much for quiet/loud dynamics that are supposedly at the heart of post-rock – they can do that, but most of the time they just create an endless and constantly changing melody flow, much like techno bands do. The result brings to mind earlier instrumental new age/rock crossover acts such as Tangerine Dream or Ozric Tentacles, but God Is an Astronaut have none of their unobtrusiveness, offering an emotionally intense record: the melodies at the heart of these tunes are romantic and often darkly sentimental, but they are delivered in a Wall of Sound of loud guitars and sprawling synthesizer textures that do a great job of evoking the vast fiery spaces and restless mood of the cover artwork. The band knows the value of the occasional breather, in one case stretching it to a full five minutes ("Remaining Light"), and never slips into Isis-like brooding brutality, but on the whole, this music is set on moving the listener, not lulling him into gradually sinking to the bottom of his consciousness. The thing is, God Is an Astronaut's songwriting and performing prowess may seem calculating, and designed to push the listener into experiencing the planned emotions in the unceremonious fashion of a radio hit, and this may be a turn-off for some. But it can also be said that God Is an Astronaut are simply too good at what they do.

Review by Alexey Eremenko, Allmusic.com

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Props to God Is An Astronaut for having had a steady, noticeable progression throughout their career in post-rock since beginning in 2002. As I would imagine, that’s quite a feat: they’ve successfully been turning mildly bumpy 90-degree angles to vary and evolve their electro-ambient-guitar-jam exploits from release to release. You see, the three-piece have always had it in their mind to never subscribe to any of the genre’s more well-known, though restrictive, characteristics that many of their build-to-boom, echo, and reverb distant neighbors often seem to try to revitalize and make relevant in recent years. In an interview leading up to Age of the Fifth Sun's release, Torsten Kinsella (vocals, guitars, and piano) even went as far as to say that “we don’t play post-rock; we [may] have elements of [it], but I’m not going to follow the rules.”

And follow the rules Torsten, his brother Niels (bass and guitar), and Lloyd Hanney (drums and synths) have not, at least as Wikipedia might define the barriers. Their first album, The End of the Beginning, was as naked and bare as debuts can get, crafted merely on a sole sampler and keyboard station. But despite such meager beginnings, therein laid the inception of the core dance-synth groove nature of God Is An Astronaut’s sound, already showing possible signs of hope that the band might be of future interest to those more disillusioned and tired with the now-generic genre stereotypes. From their second, and often most praised release, All Is Violent, All Is Bright, which expanded the framework of their debut with the inclusion of real drumming and a more present guitar element, to the more guitar-driven, distortion-fest of 2008’s self-titled release, God Is An Astronaut have yet to settle in a niche for themselves, always delivering with at least some degree of surprise.

Until now, that is. It’s said that “if it’s not broken, then don’t fix it”, and in God Is An Astronaut’s case, that means taking everything from their past albums and combining it into one compact and somewhat disproportionate Age of the Fifth Sun, all without adding anything new or interesting into the mix. This may not sound like such a bad thing, especially for the Irish band’s fans, but it still hints that the band are running low on innovation, having to recall past efforts in order to bridge the gap to their possible future. It may be a little too early to place judgment, but it must be asked: really, do we need another stagnating post-rock band?

When Torsten stated that Age of the Fifth Sun would be a change and that “every song is different,” he wasn’t exactly telling the truth, if what he said is taken in a direct literal sense. Indeed, opener “Worlds In Collision” plays like a remix to what I’ve interpreted to be God Is An Astronaut’s remix CD: distant reverb sets the stage before Hanney takes control behind the kit, leading the Kinsella brothers with their intensely melodic flirtation of swirling synths and pounding guitar distortion along for the ride, picking up speed and then slowing down. Many of Age of the Fifth Sun’s cuts play out in such a way, varying ever so slightly – “In The Distance Fading”, “Parallel Highway”, and “Shinning Through” – and even the cuts that don’t – “Lost Kingdom,” with its hollow-like intrigue, and “Dark Rift,” playing to its name with its solemn, brooding channel of ambiance and keys – feel strangely unmotivated and uncomfortable in the track list. Repeats and awkward junctions like these cause the album to have a very bumpy and undecided path for what it wants to do. Call me pessimistic, but when a post-rock release - or any instrumental album, for that matter - fails to contain some kind of purposeful flow, be it chaotic or smooth, I begin to reach for the off button. Frankly, it’s just not worth it.

That’s the very problem that God Is An Astronaut have seemed to have stumbled onto here on Age of the Fifth Sun. In mixing the electronic-led beginnings of their debut, the more post-rock leaning of their All Is Violent, All Is Bright, and the harder-hitting moments of their self-titled release together, the band have made an album that suffers from disproportionate flow, unmotivated songwriting, and, yes, though concentrated solely on the band’s past work, recycled material. It’s really upsetting, too, as once a band removes that almost expected flair - in this case, that surprise element - that really made them stand out from the crowd initially, they then take a backseat and begin to fit in with the masses. It's not so much a relation of sounds to their sonic neighbors; it's more of a copying of tactics, and Age of the Fifth Son, I'm afraid, is where God Is An Astronaut begin to fit in with the others. This is one of the few instances in dealing with post-rock where I would say that it's best to go against the flow; too bad that God Is An Astronaut have seemingly dove in head-first.

Review by EMERITUS, Sputnikmusic.com