British musician
Will Samson
straddles a blurred line between ambient electronic composition and organic acoustic songwriting, occasionally falling deeper into one territory or another over his various albums, EPs, and collaborations. Not unlike the pastoral chamber pop of American artist
S. Carey
,
Samson
's glacial soundscapes feel deeply connected to the wonders of the natural world. After recording for a variety of European labels, he makes his debut for U.K. indie
Wichita Recordings
with
Paralanguage
, his fifth proper solo outing. Moving further away from the guitar-based introspections of his two previous albums,
takes a more ethereal approach here, relying heavily on lush, expansive backdrops of strings, piano, synths, and skittering electronic rhythms to frame his vocals, which he delivers almost entirely in an aching falsetto. He attributes the genesis of
to his personal experiences with psilocybin, a psychedelic compound found in certain species of mushrooms. Indeed, the album has an unerringly tranquil, dreamlike quality to it, especially on standouts like "Flowerbed" and "Ochre Alps" as well as its two instrumental tracks, "Lacuna" and "The Human Mosaic," which appear just past the halfway point like a sort of intermission. Aside from returning collaborator
Beatrijs Deklerck
(violins) and a few others, the bulk of the music was played and recorded by
at his home studio in Brussels. From the very beginning, he establishes a slow-moving mode of crystalline delicacy and essentially stays the course, drifting to and fro like cloud shadows on a mountainside. ~ Timothy Monger