Album Review: The Post Riot Era - Schism

Album Rating: B+

It’s an unhappy truth that the saddest things in life are the ones we relate to. We’re so detached from each other that news articles of famine and floods are pushed back from the headlines because Celebrity of the Month X had a fight with Fashion Designer Y. Most of us know nothing of true despair; we withhold our sympathy for something a little more tangible. So when a musician wants us to re-live the sorrow in their music, to truly emulate the experience they are portraying, they focus on more personal troubles. The eternal example of this is the break-up record, which cashes in on a kind of sadness that almost everyone has been unlucky enough to face. In its own way, Schism is a break up record; except The Post Riot Era is a rhythmic drone-ambient project with rather a lot more to display than a sense of loss for one individual. This is not one man’s break-up: it’s everyone’s. Schism deals with separation in its most real, lonely and necessary form. It’s as heartbreaking as it is mesmerising.