Post-rock
Self-released · 17 April 2026
“A Kiss and a Flight” opens on piano and takes seven minutes seven to arrive where everyone knows it is going. Along the way there is space, silence, a crescendo that is never sweetened and a drum entry placed with real judgement. That is the standard of execution across “Upon the Forest Floor”, and what is most surprising is learning there is no band behind it: Let It Eat You For Fun is Aaron Richardson, credited with all instruments, the mix and the master.
It is the project’s first full-length, self-released on 17 April, after an EP called “I Want To Fly The Plane”. Richardson does not hide where he comes from: he cites Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai and Godspeed You! Black Emperor, and all three references land on specific tracks. “Delusions of Grandeur”, six fifty-three, carries the Mogwai weight — slow chords, dirty guitars, everything sustained — and “Clipped Wings”, the longest at eight thirty-seven, is where the piano works as counterpoint to the guitar progression instead of merely decorating it.
What sets this record apart from others on the same ground is the recording. The layers are audibly separate, the reverb does not swallow the low end and the crescendos never arrive clipped, which in an album made at home by one person is no small thing. “A Deeper Meaning”, five minutes six, is the shortest track and the one that changes gear most decisively: it starts in a register that recalls Oceansize and picks up speed before the closing crescendo.
The record itself supplies the reservation. Seven tracks, none under five minutes or over eight and a half; all build the same curve — calm, accumulation, release — and all build it well. On “Medicated” and “An Unnerving Path”, which close at six twelve and six thirty-four, the ear knows where it will put its foot before it gets there. Forty-six minutes twenty-seven is a long stretch for a vocabulary that does not renew itself, and the author claims nothing else. It is worth what it is: a debut of real craft inside a genre whose rules are already written, and a calling card that makes you want to hear what happens when Richardson decides to break one of them.
Rating: 7.0/10
Text by Marçal Bonastre