Do you need a palate cleanser after listening to all that Vortexectomy, Parasitic Ejaculation and Cattle Decapitation? Then I present to you, Laurel Halo, the musician behind Atlas, one of the best ambient records of 2023. “Ugh, ambient” you might say, but don’t be so quick to dismiss this beautiful and apprehensive kaleidoscope of sounds. With a relatively recent relocation to Los Angeles, CA from Berlin, Germany, it’s been five years since Halo‘s previous full length, Raw Silk Uncut Wood. It has a more rhythmic approach to songwriting than Atlas, with Eli Keszler on percussion (tracks 2, 6), that really suited the jazz influences that’s been creeping into Halo‘s modern works. Even if Atlas doesn’t have the same percussive approach, it delves even deeper into a different Jazz influence and manages to produce a trance-like state of sounds that feels like being lost under water. Intertwined string arrangements (Lucy Railton on cello, James Underwood on violin) and choirs permeate the soundscape creating a meditative experience that will sweep you away.
Atlas is structured around the lead single “Belleville”, which serves as a platform where you briefly get back on your feet between the waves of spaciously delayed electronics and instrumentation. It’s definitely more stripped down than the other tracks, shining a minimalist spotlight on the piano with a guest vocal performance by Coby Sey. There’s no lyrics though, only the humming of melody, which contributes to the hazy and mysterious soundscape which the album cover also reflects—a blurred vision of Halo moving somewhere on a night lit street. The first few tracks up until “Belleville” have an excellent flow. But the subsequent tracks stumble a bit in how they’re structured, finding a repetition of certain themes from the previous songs and similarity to each other. For example, “Atlas” comes across as a deconstruction of “Belleville”. Maybe that’s the purpose though, blurring out the lines even more. Despite this gripe, if you could even call it that, the album goes by very quickly with its 40 minutes, 50 seconds runtime. After the first spin of Atlas on its release day in September, I found myself itching to go back, and it’s been in constant rotation ever since. Who doesn’t wanna roam around in an underwater version of L.A. hearing the call of a distant piano bar while the streetlights flicker in the night?
