18 tracks. Running time 75:31 A new album by Hammock – Mark Byrd and Andrew Thompson – is a cause for celebration. Raising Your Voice is an atmospheric ambient and post-rock shoegazer epic featuring their now trademark echoey drone and dreamlike guitars, plus guests on cello and performing angelic vocals. As with their debut Kenotic it's mainly instrumental with a handful of tracks containing lyrics. The soundscapes on the album are soaked with electric guitar treated with delay so that the notes ripple, echo, reverb, and drone in an intoxicating manner. The sounds possess an austere purity, like a bright silvery moonscape. What I especially like is the contradictory mix of introspective emotions juxtaposed with expansive sonics. Two words that for me sum up this album are yearning and nostalgia. The opening piece “I Can Almost See You” has aching guitar lines that open and close almost like an accordion sound and a lovely but earnest and delicate piano melody. Later on in “The House We Grew Up” the mood created is like that of looking back at pictures of a childhood home - the memories putting a smile, and also maybe a tear, on one's face for times that are lost to the inexorable pull of time. In this piece the guitars play out a melody without lots of sustain as drums and hi-hat forms a mid-tempo rhythm. Adding harmony are the elongated guitar lines which reach searing emotional intensities. Hammock don't just pull off the same trick throughout the album with lots of ambient tracks where thick sheets of guitar drones envelop the listener. They are also masters at post-rock using their signature techniques. The piece that stands out to me in this regard is the title track; drums and percussion keep the pace for sung lyrics and hypnotising guitar melodies and riffs. The Hammock sound is unique; harsh yet beautiful, and curiously satisfying while still leaving one wanting more. Raising Your Voice is a work of genius by a duo who are pathfinders in guitar based drone ambience. It's essential listening for anyone interested in ambient music and so it gets my wholehearted recommendation.