LAUREL HALO - ATLAS

Released: 22/09/23

The brilliant Los Angeles-based experimental-ambient producer Laurel Halo – née Laurel Anne Chartow – has long been feted for her ability to create wondrous hallucinatory collages by imaginatively denaturing organically created sounds. The piano is often a main component of Chartow’s previous work, primarily as material to be heavily processed; but on the fantastic Atlas, Chartow has decided to pare back such transmutations, and the piano, along with acoustic instrumentation from friends and collaborators including saxophonist Bendik Giske, violinist James Underwood, cellist Lucy Railton and vocalist Coby Sey, is rendered beguilingly strange, rather than unrecognisable. And so, as exquisite orchestral clouds ebb and flow, and Technicolor shards of modal harmony issue forth, the listener feels more connected emotionally to Atlas than perhaps anything else Chartow has done, giving one the overwhelming urge to put on a pair of headphones and head into the wild.