Melodic, dreamy, electric — Vapna's new LP is out now on Radio Plato
“We wanted to say what was left unsaid on the first album. Did we succeed? Maybe. Almost.” — Vapna
Amal ("almost" in Belarusian) is a collection of ten new songs from Belarusian duo Vapna. The album speaks in the languages of anxiety and disappointment, longing and love — a love that still exists even when “there will be no bread — there will be wine and sky.”
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 472px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=1231043807/size=large/bgcol=333333/linkcol=ffffff/artwork=small/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://radioplato.bandcamp.com/album/amal">Amal by Vapna</a></iframe>Water imagery runs throughout: symbols of sea, lake, tears, blood, and resin weave together into a mythos of intimacy, loss, and elemental emotion.
“Like many around us, we've been gazing at nature lately,” Vapna say. “In our music, we worked a lot with landscapes and atmospheres — through the language of guitars and drums.”
Compared to Askepki (2023), Amal feels more alive and visceral: there are shoegaze walls of sound (“Try Kanсy,” “Skul”), percussive punches you can feel in your gut (“La Mora,” “Čorny Smoŭž”), and nods to beloved krautrock bands (“Voziera Sloz,” “Redki Vid”). Still, the coldwave chill from their debut hasn’t disappeared (“Palohka”), nor has the dreamy indie-pop glow (“1000 Krain,” “Mama Kazala,” “Amal”).
The entire record breathes the feeling of almost: we almost came to full voice, almost rose up, almost understood, almost spoken. In this “almost” — there’s strength, beauty, and a quiet fracture.
“We wanted to say what was left unsaid on the first album. Did we succeed? Maybe. Almost.” — Vapna
