Atlas

Sound DNA

• Electronic
• Ambient & Downtempo

• sparse
• meditative
• cinematic

About

Laurel Halo’s 2018 album, <i>Raw Silk Uncut Wood</i>, marked a shift in her work, pulverizing the avant-techno rhythms of records like <i>In Situ</i> and <i>Dust</i> into choppy electro-acoustic textures flecked with jazz piano. On <i>Atlas</i>, her first major album in five years, her music continues to dissolve. Across these 10 elusive, enigmatic tracks, there are few melodies, no rhythms, no fixed points at all—just a hazy swirl of strings and piano that sounds like it was recorded underwater and from a great distance. Yet for all the music’s softness, it bears little in common with ambient as it’s typically conceived. An air of disquiet permeates the pastel haze; her atmospheres frequently feel both consonant and dissonant at the same time. Even at its most abstract, however, <i>Atlas</i> radiates unmistakable grace. In “Naked to the Light,” melancholy piano carves a path halfway between Erik Satie and mid-century jazz balladry; in “Belleville”—a distant tribute, perhaps, to the Detroit techno that influenced her—a languid keyboard figure echoes <i>Blade Runner</i>’s rain-slicked noir before a wordless choir briefly raises the specter of Alice Coltrane’s spiritual jazz. But those reference points are fleeting: For the most part, <i>Atlas</i> is a closed world, a universe unto itself, in which blurry shapes tremble in a fluid expanse of deep, abiding melancholy.

via Apple Music

Tracklist

Credits