This is the first major release for the Vancouver sound artist and classically trained singer Ian William Craig. It's a masterpiece. Ian's built up a fervent following around his blissful, intense, melancholy works for manipulated tape loops and his stunning lyric tenor voice. If you've heard his music before, here he unites all the sounds he's explored across his previous albums, and he's doing it with higher production values. He runs the whole gamut, from “songs” to long form experimental pieces to any fusion of the two. If you haven't heard his music before, you're in for a real treat, and this is a great place to start. It's all great, but 1, 2, 4, 7 are good starting points. No FCCs detected.

1. *(10:05)—Staticky beginning, like Ian's turning all his machines on. Heavily manipulated vocals. Early James Blake feel to this, except grander. Begins in a slightly chaotic, romantic mood and builds to a wall of cathedral noise.
2. *(6:26)—This is the closest thing to a pop song he's done. Luxurious and floating shoegaze slowcore, like Low or Sigur Rós.
3. (4:14)—Fractured, chilly drones. Broken machine noise, washes of falsetto.
4. *(7:46)—Begins with accordion drone and plaintive voice. Tape machines enter at 2:30, and static gradually submerges the whole thing until the piece disintegrates calmly in the final minute and ends with the sound of Ian turning off his machines and closing the door.
5. (2:47)—Wall of calm vocal drones. Sad and subzero like Sigur Rós' ( ) but trippier.
6. (6:29)—Noisy, unstable, filled with defective equipment noise. Ramps up quickly to a loud drone. Gets foreboding and choral in the final third.
7. *(2:40)—Minimal, lo-fi with just voice and rudimentary keyboard. Heartbreaking, like ice on the spine, and almost devotional.
8. (9:52)—Dark, hallucinatory, swirling, constantly shifting. Grainy drones, flitting vocals, subtle and subaquatic electronic pulses, shattered synth tones.
9. (6:03)—Starts with...something like field recordings of wind? Spare to begin, then overloaded by a blown-out choir and then drone washes.
10. (3:18)—A-cappella. Reverberant, calm, pretty.
11. (4:22)—Breezes of falsetto. Grumbling, subtle noises. Recorded partly with a form of technology predating magnetic tape.
12. (3:28)—Muted organ, dreamy drones, patches of warped noise.
13. (4:23)—Very minimal, lo-fi, single take guitar and vocals. Plaintive, unadorned folk.