Review of The Oceans We Are Drowned In by One Star Closer

This album may be the most remarkable album I've reviewed since I started working for Alternative Matter.

Remarkable because it appears to be the work of Vlad Petkevich, a one-man-band post-rock/ambient project from Minsk, Belarus.

Remarkable because that previous sentence is the sum total of information on One Star Closer/Vlad I have managed to find on the internet. The band's Facebook page has just 14 likes. And all the text is in Russian so I have no idea what those 14 people are saying about the album. Lucky for me the album and track titles are in English.

Remarkable because the music is of exceptionally high quality, superbly played and well-produced, albeit with what I assume are deliberate crackles as if it were on good old vinyl.

First track Sorry, It's Not About Space And Universe is simply gorgeous. Absolutely heavenly-sounding guitars twinkling away before drums enter playing almost a marching beat. Then after a couple of minutes we get some noisier, layered guitar and the whole thing continues to be gorgeous. The only downside is that it only lasts a little over three minutes in total.

Second track starts with piano and strings. If Vlad Petkevich is playing all this he is a special talent.

Third track starts with more piano, playing a lovely, lilting melody. Fourth track is similar to the others but doesn't reel repetitive, at least not in a bad way.

Fifth track Her Name Was Tragedy is piano and strings but has sampled some Michelle Pfeiffer dialogue from the movie I Am Sam. This serves to highlight the soundtrack quality of the music, which is no bad thing at all.

Okay, so you get the idea. The rest of the tracks follow this established pattern but all have a unique quality that stops the album getting dull. And as mentioned before, the skill involved in every part of this makes it more than worthwhile.

I just wish I knew more about One Star Closer and Vlad Petkevich.

Did he compose all the music himself? Did he play all the instruments? If not, who did? And did he record and produce everything himself sitting in his bedroom, which seems unlikely, or did he go into a studio? Which studio? Who paid for it?

And did he get permission to sample dialogue from a couple of movies?

Anyhoo, my fervent hope is that Vlad gets to read this and provide some answers.

The man may well be a musical genius and in five years everyone will know his name. I wouldn't be surprised. It feels like being at the birth of the universe.

I can confidently say that if you consider yourself any kind of a post-rock/ambient fan - however you interpret the term - then you will love this album.