Iridescent: Track by Track

Mountainscape are one of Britain's most exciting young bands. They are now based in Dudley, adjacent to the home of metal itself. Their guitar sounds are driven through an anamorphic lens, heavier than most everything you'll hear, darkly cinematic, complex and brooding. What is thrilling is their distinct eschewing  of the more unfortunate hauntological facets and nursery rhymes of new rock music. These dudes are heart-attack serious. Mountainscape's acclaimed LP Iridescent was released through Celestial Diadem's recording arm earlier this year and even BBC radio found a way to squeeze it into their music programming. Ahead of an Autumn UK tour, lead guitarist Dan talked us through the LP... Over to Dan.

BELONGING
While this track grows into quite the Goliath across its runtime, everything stems from 2 simple melodies. There's the A section and B section which evolve each time they return. The first iterations are in their simplest and most stripped back form, which is how I first came up with them. Once the drums enter we have a clean guitar loop using the chords from section A that I keep adding ambient swelled harmonies to on each repetition. When blastbeats come crashing in we have the melody from section A with different chords underneath, followed by a heavy rendition of the section B melody, again with the underlying chords adjusted. After the chunky riffage is built in we have a low tremolo version of the melody from section A, much darker sounding with a harmonic minor/byzantine feel. Following this the same melody moves back into the high register while the chords underneath change. Culminating with the big chunky riff we introduced earlier combined with that high melody.

TOWERING MONOLITHS 
This one started life with the monstrous sludgey riff that enters at 1:36, following the atmospheric and desolate space-doom introduction. The guitar synth sounds in the intro were made with the Walrus Audio Descent pedal and Source Audio Nemesis delay. I was listening to lots of Year of no light and Gatecreeper at the time. The first big riff is essentially a dark villian-esque melody, like something you'd find in a boss fight in a fantasy game. It gets brought back at the end of the piece with the time signature switched from 4/4 to ¾ and a shift from diminished/phrygian dominant vibes to the natural minor. My favourite part of the track is the tempo shift at 3:55 where we also drop the riff from being in the key of C# down to A. It's a proper stankface moment, so enjoyable to play live.

ASTRIUM
By far the most straightforward track on the album. It began with the ostinato (repeating musical pattern) which loops and that first chord sequence, very Hans Zimmer influenced. The drum grooves that evolve throughout really drive this piece while the guitar and bass arrangements are relatively simple. I love the climactic ending which brings back the earlier muted guitar ostinato as a soaring melody.

IGNIS
The most complex track on the album starts out with ambient sci-fi inspired chords which return later as a swelled lead part over some crushing riffage (4:07). The very spacey guitar-synth tones in the intro use the Nemesis delays Helix setting. The sludgey riffage came to me while listening to a lot of The Moth Gatherer and Telepathy. Like with much of our material there are sections that repeat but when returning we add a lead part or it's played in a different manner, as a tremolo part instead of a doomy one for example. The ambient break from 6:25 that grows into the looping heavy tremolo/blastbeat section I had stored away from a writing session a few years ago. Too good to throw away but when I first wrote it it didn't fit into any of the tracks from our previous album Atoms Unfurling. I knew it needed to be part of a big complex heavy track and Ignis was calling out for it. The song originally ended with this but after demoing and some re-writes I realised I could sneak back in the riff from 4:14 that I had initially planned on repeating for longer. It's really fun to play parts with a Rit (getting gradually slower) as a band live so it was a no brainer to do this with the end of Ignis.

IRIDESCENT
For the title track I had the idea of looping a chord that builds one note at a time to underpin some tasty chord sequences. It's a technique often found in ambient music which is a real love of mine.The shimmer setting with all the dry signal scooped out (Walrus Audio Descent pedal) gives this an almost choral feel. There are multiple sections (in a couple of different musical keys) that use this same underpinning across the track. The penultimate melodic guitar part which then gets switched into a bass line is one of the most enjoyable parts to play on the album. The hard cut ending felt like a great way to finish the album leaving the listener wanting to hit play again.

Mountainscape's Autumn/Winter '24 Tour Dates
SEPTEMBER
27th Brighton with hubris
28th September: London with hubris
29th September: Nottingham with hubris
NOVEMBER
22nd Cardiff with L.O.E.
23rd Liverpool with L.O.E.
24th Huddersfield with L.O.E.
30th Manchester with L.O.E.
DECEMBER
1st London: Prog The Forest