Lantlôs - Melting Sun (Yellow Vinyl LP)

Facts A meditative dream journey Cold, urban, stark, escapist - these keywords were often attributed to the music of Lantlos in the past. Now with the band's fourth album "Melting Sun", many things change on different levels: After Neige's (Alcest) amical departure, Markus Siegenhort is solely responsible for the (by now only clean) vocals and has gathered a complete line-up for the very first time. These changes in personnel go along with a pleasant paradigm shift: Whereas in the past, the sound used to be chill and at times forbidding, "Melting Sun" paints warm, oneiric vistas in bright hues, where dream mingles with reality and all details merge into majestic entities of colour and shape. Thus, escapism is still essential to Lantlos' work, albeit under reverse conditions. With their new album, the group has created a meditative dream journey with a perfect visual counterpart in artist Pascal Hauer's impressive illustrations. "Melting Sun" turns out to be a relaxed summer record between Post Metal and Dream Rock that, although it presents the gist of Lantlos in a new musical form, remains characteristic, profoundly honest and - most of all - enthralling.