The methodology behind these recordings proves as audacious as the music itself. Guistolise entered LettucePray Records' facility with no pre-written material, constructing each piece spontaneously during the recording sessions. This approach—equal parts terrifying and liberating—has yielded results that crackle with genuine discovery. You can hear it throughout: the sense of musicians (Guistolise handles multiple instruments himself) finding the path forward in real time, following intuition rather than blueprint.
"Brilliant Massive Stones" opens proceedings with appropriate bombast, layers of distorted guitar building atop rhythms that pound with metronomic insistence. The influence of Godspeed You! Black Emperor hovers over proceedings, yet Guistolise avoids mere imitation. Where the Canadian collective often favours slow-building tension and orchestral sweep, Mountains of Heaven opts for a more immediate, visceral impact. The drums hit harder, the bass growls with stoner-rock heft, and the overall effect lands somewhere between the drone-heavy experimentation of early Sonic Youth and the more accessible melodicism of latter-day Explosions in the Sky.
"Of Sound" continues this trajectory, adding psychedelic flourishes that recall Spacemen 3's narcotic drones, while "Armor" demonstrates Guistolise's ability to marry heaviness with purpose. These tracks function best as a suite, each building upon the atmospheres established by its predecessor.
The album's gentler moments prove equally compelling. "Music and Laughing" drifts into what Guistolise terms "loudgaze"—a neologism that captures the project's aesthetic neatly. Here, the shoegaze influence becomes explicit, with guitars creating shifting textures that shimmer and dissolve like heat haze. "Imperilous" follows similar paths, though with an undercurrent of unease that prevents the music from becoming mere ambience.
The closing tracks, "Banquet" and "Saudade," offer melodic resolutions to the journey. The latter's title—a Portuguese word denoting profound melancholic longing—suits the music perfectly. These pieces demonstrate that Guistolise possesses not just the ability to create overwhelming sonic force, but also the restraint to know when to offer quieter reflection.
The production throughout deserves particular mention. The recordings capture the raw energy of the improvised performances while maintaining clarity across the dense layers of sound. The drums thunder without muddying the mix; the bass provides foundation without overwhelming; the guitars, whether screaming or shimmering, occupy their own distinct space.
Guistolise's stated influences form a formidable pantheon—from La Monte Young's minimalist drones through My Bloody Valentine's textural innovations to the gothic melodrama of The Cure and the primal blues-rock of Led Zeppelin. Remarkably, traces of each can be detected without the album becoming a mere pastiche. The Ministry influence particularly manifests in the industrial-strength rhythmic backbone that underpins even the dreamier passages.
The decision to keep all performances secret and unannounced adds to the mystique, though one suspects these pieces would translate powerfully to the live setting. The improvisational genesis suggests that no two performances would be identical, offering audiences the kind of unique experience that has become increasingly rare.
Whether the album truly succeeds as the "consistent go-to" experience its creator intended—music designed for repeated front-to-back listening—will depend largely on the listener's tolerance for extended instrumental excursions and willingness to surrender to pure sound. Those seeking conventional song structures or immediate hooks will find themselves adrift. For listeners drawn to the more exploratory reaches of post-rock, however, Mountains of Heaven 1 and 2 offers rewarding terrain indeed.
Guistolise has made a statement of intent: loud, uncompromising, yet never merely noisy for noise's sake. This is purposeful music, born from spontaneity but shaped by vision.