Like a brief snowfall on a winter morning, Rebirth arrives with a quiet, entrancing beauty and departs almost as quickly.
Released Dec. 24, the extended play from the Moscow-based group Powder! Go Away is steeped in a theatrical winter atmosphere, evoking the stark landscapes of Eastern Europe.
The band has been releasing music for more than a decade, developing a reflective interpretation of the post-rock tradition rooted in instrumental ensemble work that resists conventional structure and genre.
Powder! Go Away is composed of guitarists Sergey Velesko, Eugeniy Sanches and Valeriy Suhov, bassist Pavel Utropov, and drummer Ilya Gerasimenk.
For Rebirth, the group set aside electric guitars and expansive pedal boards in favor of acoustic instruments, lending the music a restrained, intimate character.
Across four brief compositions—lasting about ten minutes in total—the recording conjures a deep-winter mood, carefully adorned with wandering guitar lines and subtle dynamic shifts.
If water exists in this landscape, it is frozen over.
Acoustic guitars, gentle piano and marching percussion form images of a world covered in snow and ice, austere yet quietly beguiling.
That atmosphere is distilled in the closing track, “The Light of Winter Sunset Is in Your Window,” which pairs tender guitar and piano with a crackling recording of a voice speaking in Russian.
Rebirth is a concise and moving portrait of the season—a fleeting journey, but one worth taking
