Montréal Ambient Post-Hardcore Troupe MILANKU Unveil New Music Video

It’s the weekend! Time for deep breaths and a slower pace and reflection. At least time enough to check out the new music video from MILANKU. The five-member Montréal band conjures an ethereal sound that takes advantage of ambient soundscapes to drop a robust blend of post-everything.

Milanku’s new record is entitled ‘À l'aube’ (2023), which translates to “At dawn.” Each track on the album takes a que from there, starting with misty atmosphere, perhaps representing various stages of the rising sun. This is followed by a radiant post-rock instrumental push with post-hardcore vocal inflections.

The band sings in French, as well, with lyrics inspired by the poetry of French-Czech writer Milan Kundera (b. 1929), who wrote The Unbearable Lightness of Being – a book that muses about philosophical themes like time, happiness, and eternal return (the idea that everything in the universe repeats itself).

In fact, the song titles themselves are each piece of a poem, which like the music delves into poignant feelings of loneliness, despair, and consolation. Milanku gave us this window into their creative process:

Most of the skeleton of the album was built before the pandemic. After a few months of downtime, we refined and modified the songs and recorded the songs in two studio sessions. The pandemic had an impact on the sound of all the songs on the album. Without the pandemic, the result of the album would not be the same at all. The album sounds like a whole, a maturity of the band and a story that is told from the first note to the last.

Having revealed the opening track already, today Milanku reveals the album closer: “À l'aube; nous sommes disparus” (“At dawn; we will be gone”). It features Erika Angell from Thus Owls.

The most musically emotional track of the album, this song starts off as a sweet guitar melody and slowly turns into a storm featuring Erika’s voice as the grand priestess of this storm that everyone is trying to escape. The lyrics in Swedish and French make it even more mystical.

Milaku’s À l'aube doesn’t just rage against the gloom; it observes it, experiences it deeply, and reaches tirelessly towards hope. The sound absolutely envelops you in ecstatic glory by album’s end. Look for it March 31st on Folivora Records (pre-order here). For fans of Cult of Luna, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Neurosis

Give ear…

SOME BUZZ

If Milanku draws its origins from the work of Milan Kundera, the soundtrack is definitely more on the side of the thundering density of the being than of its “unbearable lightness”, galvanized by the Czech author.

From the start, Milanku hammers out its brutal character, infused with melancholy, even dystopia, and standing straight upright on the wire: defiant, shouting, and inspired.

Mesmerized by the warrior’s rage, flayed by its own doldrums, the quartet relies on pared-down arrangements and an oft-staged vocal presence, harmonizing like an instrument, and howling at the big time, but plastered with a disquieting sense of dilettante.

At the heart of the enterprise, tearing off the peels of flapping skins, we explore the state of affairs of the contemporary genre, tragic, desolate, where any notion of common sense seems diffuse in the amalgam of trompe-l'oeil. The texts are meditative, inquisitive and the observations that emanate from them, weep and persist in trying to make sense of it, through its ever-growing losses of illusion.

With four full-length releases behind them, Milanku presents today 'À l'aube’ (2023), a five-track burn that breathes new life into a caste of disenfranchised people, imbued with a disarming lucidity, and gives itself a framework and a voice to pull its head out of the swamp.