Madeleine Cocolas — Ithaca
The feeling of the music is serious, sensitive, and delicate; a quiet, deliberate space in which every subtle shift of tone is heard. Faint string synth and warm plucks of electric bass swell around the central tones of the piano. Her minimalist progressions cycle patiently in a reassuring, organized simplicity. It's quite sentimental, romantic, and melancholic, with a tone like an Indie film.
While too quiet to be anything other than 'ambient', this music is meant for active listening and would be better suited to a cinematic context than sleeping. The crescendo present within each five minute piece tells a story of unresolved longing and emotional pain, of being painfully awake. There is not a trace of hedonism within the naked introspective realness of this record.
Tracks such as "Circular" and "A Basic Understanding" explore Berlin School influences, with synthesizer arpeggios and timpani-like drum machines, creating a sensation of escape into nature. Something of a break from the gut-wrenching melancholy of the album's first half, these pieces are of a more visually evocative, exploratory style, and likely my favorite tracks on the album. The flow of the album from beginning to end is masterfully woven, for a concise forty three minutes runtime.
A bit too much of a downer for me to indulge in often, Cascadia is still a fantastic piece of music, for those who find epic narrative beauty in the age-old cycle of coupling and parting, and do not mind to take a hard look at the harrowing existential implications of the passage of time and corporeal existence.