Immersive new album In Sore Bless finds The Discretes weaving art rock, ambient, noise, and trip-hop influences into a captivating listening experience, driven by CECILIA’s poetry and vocal delivery alongside Ali Ayrik’s vibey instrumentation. Across its shifting soundscapes, the album explores mortality, inner reflection, and the tension between vulnerability and resistance.
Also bolstered by an immersive music video, lead single and album opener “Deep Noon” is a riveting atmospheric success. An unsettling ambient entry leads into CECILIA’s dreamy lead mystique, stirringly reminiscent of Björk in its initial spacious haunts. Slight, panting percussion eases in alongside as the soundscape continues to simmer enjoyably. Twangy guitar elements meld with the lushly emotive lead phrasing for a further spellbinding impact, greeting listeners to the album with a gorgeous track that balances experimental ingenuity and spine-tingling melodic prowess.
Another delightful track, “Remedium” fuses solemn acoustics and rhythmic pitter-patter amidst CECILIA’s layered harmonic chills, heightening in pitch around the midpoint as sturdy distortion lingers underneath. The ensuing “Hiding High” then embraces a more serene atmospheric pull, returning to English-language delivery as lulling synths and soft acoustics intertwine; the aesthetic reminds stirringly of Beach House in its dream-pop entrancement. “ICI” also delights, infusing cinematic strings alongside a subdued lead voice.
Album finale “Blue Hour Pending” then reveals another fantastic soundscape, fusing lyrical themes of remembrance and time with ghostly choral layers and swelling instrumentation, here showing shades of Radiohead in its avant-garde buzzing and jazz-tinged rhythmic outpouring. Full of memorable soundscapes and emotively melodic songwriting, In Sore Bless is a wonderful, highly artistic output from The Discretes.
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“Deep Noon” and other tracks featured this month can be streamed on the updating Obscure Sound’s ‘Emerging Singles’ Spotify playlist.
