Liminal Sky is the meeting point of two musicians searching for a way out of the darkness. Continuing their work from their previous band Messenger, Jaime Gomez Arellano and Daniel Knight channel sadness and loss into a shared musical language. The borderland between despondency and tear-stained hope has a name: Liminal Sky.
Progressive, widescreen guitars chime out, stark yet luminous, barren yet revealing as Liminal Sky layers and climaxes each song to a heady reverberating crescendo. The instrumentation on All Tomorrow’s Darkness is seamlessly eclectic, and spirited by a constellation of guest musicians and voices who appear throughout. Mat McNerney’s vocals and lyrics on six of the album’s nine tracks form the backbone of the record. Crafting the lyrics and vocal arrangements together with Gomez and Knight in Finland to establish the soul of their debut album, McNerney’s words articulate the album’s terrain. Having recently lost his mother, McNerney brought a profound personal resonance with songs like ‘In Some Secret Universe’ and ‘Algebra of Unknowing’ expanding the album’s honesty and depth.
Other voices move through All Tomorrow’s Darkness like spectral presences: Kristoffer Rygg (Ulver) brings a fragile, shimmering intensity to two tracks, while Karin Park (Årabrot) adds raw emotional gravity to ‘Penance,’ and Daniel O’Sullivan (Ulver, Æthenor, Grumbling Fur, Årabrot collaborator) provides a haunting vocal invocation on the title track. Around them, instrumental colours bloom across the record’s expanse with Lars Horntveth (Jaga Jazzist, The National Bank) threading saxophone, synths and lap steel, while Alicia Nurho (violinist/violist in contemporary classical & experimental music) paints the album with pale, trembling strings. Anders Møller (Kåre & The Cavemen / Euroboys, Ulver live percussionist) deepens the rhythmic pulse with ritualistic percussion, Tore Ylwizaker (Ulver) in one of his last recorded performances contributes a ghostly piano refrain, and Ole Alexander Halstensgård (Ulver) shadows the soundscape with dissolving electronic textures. Finally, Matt Rozeik (Necro Deathmort) (multi-instrumentalist/producer known for atmospheric electronic and alternative rock work) adds subtle, smouldering synth tones. Every collaborator adds texture without altering direction, held together by Gomez’s careful production and cohesive sonic identity for clarity and atmosphere.
Released worldwide by Karisma Records on 16th June, All Tomorrow’s Darkness introduces Liminal Sky as a music of fearless vulnerability. It is melancholic post-rock scraped down to bone, grief and beauty without resolution. For fans of Messenger, (early) Opeth, Jeff Buckley, Ulver, The Mars Volta, Anathema, Radiohead, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Sigur Rós, and Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden era.
All Tomorrow’s Darkness marks both an ending and a beginning: a final chapter in a long, difficult period for its creators, and the opening of a new path for Liminal Sky. Gomez has already begun writing the next Liminal Sky album. Whether out of necessity or instinct, the world of Liminal Sky continues to expand, bleakly, beautifully and lit by the faint glow that appears when all other lights have gone out.
Liminal Sky are:
Jaime Gomez Arellano
Daniel Knight
Liminal Sky online:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61579289855890
https://www.instagram.com/liminalskyband/
