Style: Post-Rock, Post-Metal, Desert Rock (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Pink Floyd, Maruja, Mastodon, Kyuss
Release date: 14 November 2025

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I’m not a big dessert guy. I like a bit of ice cream now and then, maybe some chocolate…

– oh wait?

– Ah, right, my bad.

I’m not a big desert guy. But I’ve driven through Death Valley in the middle of July, turning off the A/C in my truck so the engine wouldn’t overheat. I’ve crested the sand dunes in Texas, and visited The Official Center of the World in Felicity, California. I’ve been to Las Vegas and Palm Springs and have seen how humanity builds concrete and steel monuments to its power over nature, pumping in water and shipping in food from miles away. I get the romantic appeal, but actually being in the desert sucks. It’s miserably hot in the middle of the day and miserably cold in the middle of the night. Also, there are snakes.

Deserts have only two redeeming qualities

1. The Sahara Desert fertilizes the Amazon Rain Forest, which is home to some weird birds.¹
2. Deserts in general have inspired some really awesome media.

Spaghetti westerns, Star Wars, and Queens of the Stone Age all draw inspiration from the mysterious, barren, alienness of desert landscapes. The dry, silent, salty emptiness is a fantastic canvas on which to paint your heroic epic, your self-actualization spirit journey, or your kickass riffs. Kylver continue this artistic tradition with their latest album, The Gobi, falling firmly into that “kickass riffs” category.

Space rock and desert rock are sister genres tied together in the public consciousness, perhaps, by sci-fi epics like Star Wars and Dune, which are ostensibly set “in space” but dwell for extended periods in the landscapes of desert planets. “The Frozen Sands”, the first track on The Gobi, exemplifies the primary aesthetic difference between these two genres: desert rock is rawer, heavier, dirtier. It isn’t a sleek, clean, warp-drive interstellar cruiser—it’s a belt-driven scavenger tank, trudging over dunes, flying tattered flags, its paint sand-blasted to bare metal. “The Frozen Sands” wakes us up at the crack of dawn—the sun just peeking over the horizon, the hot air just starting to rise—and sends us out toward the unknown, to carve life out of the unforgiving nothingness. Crunchy guitars, wavering organ, porcelain drops of piano, and tumbling drums build an aesthetic that is hard to fault.

Instrumental rock is hard to do well; tracks sometimes want for a singer to fill the space, riffs are repeated one too many times, there often isn’t the right balance of novelty (to catch a listener’s interest) and repetition (to make tracks memorable). But The Gobi shines here, as well. Compositionally, each song feels well-developed; a variety of instrumental melodies are used as hooks and refrains, building fully-realized works that do not have that sense of incompleteness. “Allghoi” is a great example of this; a simple three-note riff becomes a theme around which the entire song is built. Although straightforward, there is enough minute variation and additional instrumentation to fill out the track, preventing that modest hook from becoming an irritant.

“Donghu” exhibits another aspect of Kylver‘s compositional prowess: texture. Flute-like synths reminiscent of Änglagård spar with impressively punchy drumming: rough, then smooth, then rough again. But “Spirit of the Hunt” loses the plot a bit. The forward flute and wall of synths make this feel more like a Jethro Tull Forest Adventure™ than a sweaty, tiring hunt in the desert. The end of “Allghoi” is also a weak point of the album, with its signature riff repeated way too many times. This feels forgivable, though, as a very extended outro to the album.

Post-rock is a genre where the atmosphere created by an album is not the foundation upon which a story is told, that atmosphere is the story. The Gobi tells a compelling tale, though the one it tells is not dramatically different from the myriad other examples of desert landscapes described through song. The Gobi sets out to paint a desert post-rock vibe and delivers, while avoiding the pitfall of bloated self-indulgence many of its contemporaries fall victim to. There are no glaring deficiencies here, but there are not exhibit many jaw-droppingly excellent passages, either. It’s like a crème brûlée without that satisfying crackling caramelized sugar crust; it’s like a slightly-overbaked, just-a-bit-too-dry angel food cake; it’s like ice cream which has melted a little on the way home from the store, refroze, and now the texture is off; it’s like…

…anyone hungry?

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Recommended tracks: The Frozen Sands, Donghu
You may also like: Änglagård
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Kylver is:
– James Bowmaker (bass)
– Barry Micherson* (drums)
– Jonny Scott (guitar)
– James Hill (keys)

* alternately spelled Micheson, Micherson, Mitcheson, Mitcherson, Mitcheson

1. Look at this freak. ↩︎