Din of Celestial Birds – Takeoffs & Landings
Release Date: 7th August 2026
Label: Big Scary Monsters (UK/EU) / A Thousand Arms (US) / Tomato (China)
Bandcamp
Genre: Post-Rock, Post-Metal, Progressive, Alternative, Rock, Metal.
FFO: Oceansize, God Is An Astronaut, Russian Circles, Maybeshewill, Mono.
Review By: Pete Wall
Din Of Celestial Birds, named after a remarkable, abstract short film about the birth of consciousness, have spent the past few years steadily building themselves into one of the UK’s most beloved bands in the post-whatever space. Since the release of 2023’s The Night Is For Dreamers, the Leeds quintet have progressed from a word-of-mouth curio to a major force, appearing at the likes of ArcTanGent, Damnation and dunk!fest, before finding their biggest audience yet at Can Festival in China. That momentum, alongside the endless cycle of driving, flying, loading gear, sound-checking and starting all over again, has fed directly into Takeoffs & Landings, a record centred on adventure and movement that captures the uncertainty, exhilaration and sheer scale of life’s journey. The fact that the Can show came right off the back of a matinee performance to about 100 people in the back room of Rough Trade, Bristol, perfectly encapsulates the gear shifts and scope of the fledgling years since EP1 saw the light of day back in 2019.
Listening to the album from front to back is a reminder of the singular experience of taking flight. From the sudden shift in your stomach as the ground disappears beneath you, to the strange weightlessness of being temporarily suspended between two places. And once you complete a journey, there’s the landing: the inevitable return to earth, and with it all the requisite anxiety and promise of the future. Across the album’s eight instrumental tracks, Din Of Celestial Birds pull on these threads and conjure something exquisite.
Takeoffs & Landings has absolutely no fat on the bone. Each track feels purposeful, moving through peaks and troughs with the sort of life-affirming rush of energy that has become increasingly characteristic of the band’s work. Compared with The Night Is For Dreamers, this is a more muscular record, but it retains all of the softness and beauty that made their debut so affecting. Gone are the audio samples that injected spoken-word gravity into EP1 and their debut record, yet there is no sense of their absence. If anything, removing them allows the music to speak entirely for itself.
The title track immediately establishes intent, bursting into life with invigorating force. Melodies stretch out across enormous guitar tones before giving way to riffs that feel like an instant escalation of their previous work. Marmoris pushes that even further, moving between shimmering calm and increasingly imposing heaviness before eventually detonating into a wall of tremolo guitars and blast beats. The melodic break in the track, and the swell that follows it, are sublime, demonstrating how effectively the band play with dynamics. The more liberal use of heaviness hits harder precisely because of the craft involved in creating space around it.
That same restless momentum runs through From This Summit We Can See The Heavens & Stars. Its looming, cavernous opening gradually gathers weight, eventually swelling into a huge, euphoric finale. The close of the track is meaty as all hell, and it promises to be an absolute belter of a live proposition. Din Of Celestial Birds have never underestimated the value of a slow build, and here they seem more confident than ever in their ability to hold the listener in the palm of their collective hand.
Some of the album’s most affecting moments, however, come when that barreling forward motion collides with something much more emotionally difficult. I Hope That Road Leads You Somewhere Beautiful, Somewhere You Belong, written in memory of guitarist Andie Gill’s late partner and muse Roisin, carries an unimaginable pain beneath its bright high notes. The gorgeous harmonies and soaring lead melody are shot towards the heavens with such feeling that the track stops you in your tracks.
Working once more alongside the masterful Joe Clayton, multiple listens are an absolute must to take in the band’s deeper, more layered approach, with additional synths, double-tracked guitars and a plethora of intricate touches revealing themselves with each pass. Clayton’s production and engineering give the record an expansive, tactile quality without polishing away its rawness. Takeoffs & Landings sounds enormous, while remaining unmistakably the work of closely connected human beings playing together.
Ultimately, Takeoffs & Landings lifts you off your feet and pulls you into a passage defined by propulsion, turbulence, staggering beauty, and the inevitable impact of touching down. Despite the tragedy interwoven with its creation, it bristles with energy and ambition. There is a vast expanse ahead just waiting to be explored, and the journey is far from over.
(4.5 / 5)
