The Californian composer, producer and DJ amazes with a project completely distinct from the rest of her catalogue.
With her new album, Atlas, electronic musician Laurel Halo (Laurel Anne Chartow) has taken a leap into the void by composing an orchestral ambient album fusing jazz and classical touches. It was a leap that could have made for a painful landing. But Atlas proves to be a mystical cloud of atmosphere, a marvelous, magical ocean that beckons us to dive in.
Halo and her multi-instrumentalist skill palette (she plays piano, guitar, vibraphone, electronics and violin) is working with collaborating musicians Bendik Giske (saxophone), Lucy Railton (cello), and James Underwood (violin). Together, they combine the waves and currents of ambient, minimalism, jazz and classical music. The result is a weightless, delicately beautiful composition whose ten tracks make for one continuous experience.
Whenever I find myself in the abstract cloud of Atlas, I can’t help but picture a jellyfish. The alienness of it, the apparent peace of the animal’s light undulatory movement is the perfect visual analogue to the music. The composition breathes, its ebbs and flows imprinting on the mind as it goes. Vertically oriented, it swims in place rather than searching to progress or grow, instead letting the currents carry it along. When listening, we’re far underwater, somewhere where heavy pressure and silence meet the subconscious; where light rays can be counted on one hand. Here, texture reigns supreme, and movements are subtle. You need only close your eyes and feel. Pure atmosphere fills our lungs: We’re in the quiet throes of gestation, in the phytoplankton of ideas, the primordial soup of inspiration. You feel out of this world, but closer to everything, the drifting energy of it all.
This album, with so little movement, manages to take us far away. Atlas is opaque, enveloping, but microscopically detailed. It’s a cloth that makes the mundane seem magical. It is definitely one of my favorite projects of the year. If you liked Promises, by Floating Points and Pharoah Sanders, I would say Atlas is its protozoal, primal, billion-year-old version. I strongly encourage diving into it. To lose and find yourselves.
