Notes for the Synthesis is constructed of six unified post-rock tracks moving through gloomy and melancholic passages to intense and captivating soundscapes. Each track tells its own tale in the overall storyline, inviting the listener into the role of narrator and interpreter of the instrumental introverted musical journey.

The album further explores The Seven Mile Journey´s musical approaches and concepts deeper than ever before, along with combining these with new ones. Through this the band creates new layers in their music and is intensifying and broadening the overall dimensions and expression in the songs, in the sound of The Seven Mile Journey, and in the new album as a whole.

REVIEWS

Nowlikephotographs / Record Of The Week

The Seven Mile Journey, a Danish quartet, has been procuring long-form post-rock for a decade and a few years, with their latest effort – and arguably most cohesive and polished to-date – seeing a March 12th release on the new post-rock imprint Fluttery Records. Known for tracks which in and of themselves create individual sonic seven-mile journeys, The Seven Mile Journey exude an aesthetic laden with contemplative gloom and the intelligent sparseness of storytelling, passed through a post-rock filter of repetition and crescendo. Topping their previously lengthiest track (“Passenger’s Log, The Unity Fractions” from 2006′s The Journal Studies, length 15:28) with introduction “Departures” and opener “The Alter Ego Autopsies”, the listener knows immediately that the group has honed, focused, and sharpened its musical vision, as attention is never lost over those first 22 minutes. Reserve and restraint are evident and well-used, particularly by percussive elements in “Simplicity Has a Paradox” and the opening of closer “The Etiology Diaries,” below its darkly shimmering ambiance. In successfully avoiding spectacle and excessive musical speculation, The Seven Mile Journey have crafted an hour of post-rock which asks questions of its listeners, yet yields few answers.

Caleidoscoop / Jan Willem Broek

Last month, American quality label Fluttery has already shown to have the better post-rock. Bands from Portugal (Diamond Gloss), Russia (Freedom Voyagers), England (Double Handsome Dragons) and Serbia (Ana Never) show that well what. Now they release the new CD Notes For The Synthesis by The Seven Mile Journey from Denmark. The quartet is active since 1999 and previously released a self-titled demo in 2001, and the CDs The Journey Studies (2006) and The Metamorphosis Project (2008). Nicolai, Jakob, Morten and Henrik construct their usually long tracks from guitars, piano, bass, samples, and drums. The six instrumental tracks on their latest CD are between 2 (the intro) and 20 minutes, and are really just one long track with inaudible breaks. They really take their time to build up their music. The CD opens with a pleasantly nagging guitar sound reminiscent of Godspeed You! Black Emperor. That band returns more often as an association in their music, and also Mogwai, Mono, Sonic Youth and Explosions In The Sky. As with many other post-rock bands, quite forceful outbursts occur in the music. However, it seems like The Seven Mile Journey intends to tell an thrilling story more than to focus on the louder or softer parts. It is exactly for that reason, that one stays on the edge of one's seat the whole while, and sometimes even get blown off of that, although it never gets really aggressive. There is a pleasantly softening shoegaze sound mixed in with the more powerful parts. They manage to vary nicely, and move, for example, from intimate piano pieces to gritty guitar ambient and imposing post-rock. The soundscapes they create are layered en beautifully melancholic. Everything fits; no note too many, and no weaker moments. Additionally, it is also an intensely beautiful album!

Music On Tnt / Loris Gualdi

The Seven Mile Journey are part of the so-called United Nations of Fluttery Records, founded in 2008, aiming to become a landmark for creative and independent music. it was natural finding Among its releases a work like “Notes for the Synthesis”, a delightful full-length album combining the post-rock creativity and the alternative attitude with an accurate technicality and a whole made of soft and dreamy sensations. The album appears as a gentle awakening, diluted in white and black little drops able to turn the listening into a gradual vision of surrealistic images. The musical scores, through misaligned points of views, take the shape of an mitigated version of God is an Astronaut, deprived of their hysteria and rudeness. A post-rock which joins a conception filtered through anxieties and fears in the vein of IF trees could talk, starting point of an attentive listening, which will bring to vintage as well as avant-garde metal-flavoured sensations. There are also those necessary distortions and complicated directional changes, which skillfully incite a surrealistic dialogue among the instruments, put at the service of a long captivating story-telling which perfectly corresponds to the quality demanded by the fans of this genre.