The Antarcticans

“I wasn’t prepared for it...it really left a mark, like being bitch slapped by a thousand guitars.”--Chuck P. Dead Air on Indie 103.1 - Indie 103.1 Los Angeles, CA

Avoiding the first-person is a challenge for this writer, when reviewing an album that for a self-professed instrumental rock idolater takes on distinctively personal semantics. The stereotypical way to introduce a post-rock album by hitherto unknowns is the obligatory equation, often skillfully woven into text, but here explicitly stated: Antarcticans = Godspeed You Black Emperor x (early-Mogwai + early-Explosions in the Sky) / My Bloody Valentine. Though somewhat descriptive, such a proclamation is largely arbitrary, and ultimately serves to further distance the unfamiliar from an already insular community of listeners. For post-rock, and noise-rock as is also present, are strange beasts that can frequently, to the untrained ear, come off sounding like a wall-of-noise, distorted and dissonant, formless and excessive.

But as this four-piece Los Angeles-based group demonstrates, it’s all about discovering those hidden intricacies that fail to present themselves on first listen. Unlike conventional rock, this doesn’t revolve around an infuriatingly catchy refrain, but relies on constant revisiting to familiarize oneself with what will eventually prove to be a far more rewarding experience.

Rather than attempt to bombard their audience with short spurts of violence, The Antarcticans realize, with their debut album, that their compositions need time and space to develop. Thus they offer up a free-wheeling sonic journey akin to Godspeed’s most epic constructions. The path is unpredictably volatile, but entirely mesmerizing, contrasting hardcore onslaughts with psychedelic resolution. The second track establishes a vivid and emotive soundscape that evokes Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” (albeit a distant descendant). But The Antarctican’s ability to instantaneously inflect an idiom they have apparently wasted no time in mastering is constantly mesmerizing.
- Parasol.com

Instrumental guitar drifts from just off the L.A. coastline, the Antarticans' self-titled, handmade debut isn't as black (metal) handsome as its packaging, but rather white-hot glacial rock. – Raoul Hernandez - Austin Chronicle

Mystical epics carved with glacial grace by this 5-piece from
Pasadena. Lengthy instro excursions climb through God Speed
clouds up and over the Holy Mountain. Excellent use of the
rise and fall of dynamics, as if the listener finds resting
caves along the way, only to catch a second and a third wind,
along with a second and third guitarist to boot. Track one
hits a pagan celebration about 10 minutes in, Io Pan indeed.
Track two begins bending an angular riff over a broken half
step at the temple to some two-headed god. Janus? The god
gets angry, then blissfully calm, then angry again. The band
seems to have a firm grasp on how long to ride a passage
before moving on to other territory. The last track finds
all five adrift on an iceberg with the mummified remains of
Florian Fricke. Nice harmonics tick up to a squall around
6:50 in…large auditorim reverb billowing on quick picked
guitar that mounts in fury till 11 minutes or so…then its
a very slow fade to white, which is the new black. Somewhere
between the 12- and 32-minute marks that song vanishes into
thin air.

- kfjc.org