God Is an Astronaut: Origins

All hail this crack unit of soundscape shifters from Co Wicklow. Whatever's growing in the Glen of the Downs – call it nutrition, call it sustenance, call it food for the chromosomes – GIAA have it in abundance. Track titles are straight out of the Pink Floyd songbook (Weightless, Exit Dream, Spiral Code, Light Years from Home), but the superlative songs aren't the work of mere copyists. Operating within the much abused "post-rock" idiom, God Is an Astronaut have a kind of controlled chaos thing going on; all of the dozen tunes initially feel as if they're going to drop off, lemming-like, the edge of a cliff. Yet they quickly and intuitively rally round with a two-fingered salute to the naysayers. A swirling force of guitar-noise momentum, it's a crying shame that this bunch still remain one of Ireland's best-kept secrets. superadmusic.com/god