Recorded the Ina-GRM Studios, »Atlas« explores electroacoustic sound design and piano practice. It features saxophonist Bendik Giske, violinist James Underwood, cellist Lucy Railton and vocalist Coby Sey.

Laurel Halo has spent over a decade stepping into different towns and cities for a moment or more, to the point where everywhere almost became nowhere. Atlas, the debut release on her new imprint Awe, is an attempt to put that feeling to music. Using both electronic and acoustic instrumentation, Halo has created a potent set of sensual ambient jazz collages, comprised of orchestral clouds, shades of modal harmony, hidden sonic details, and detuned, hallucinatory textures. The music functions as a series of maps, for places real and imaginary, and for expressing the unsaid.

Being alone in an unfamiliar location prompts a certain kind of silent observation. What motivates all these people? Which events might have occurred here? Over time, these places and voices become distant memories, interspersed with dreams and illusions.

Currently based in Los Angeles, Laurel Halo has spent over a decade stepping into different towns and cities for a moment or more, to the point where everywhere almost became nowhere. Atlas, the debut release on her new imprint Awe, is an attempt to put that feeling to music. Using both electronic and acoustic instrumentation, Halo has created a potent set of sensual ambient jazz collages, comprised of orchestral clouds, shades of modal harmony, hidden sonic details, and detuned, hallucinatory textures. The music functions as a series of maps, for places real and imaginary, and for expressing the unsaid.

The process of writing Atlas began back in 2020 when she reacquainted herself with the piano. She relished the piano’s physical feedback, as well as its capacity to express emotion and lightness. And when the legendary Ina-GRM Studios in Paris invited her to take up a residency the following year in 2021, she spared no time to dub, stretch and manipulate some of the simple piano sketches she’d recorded over the prior months; these subtle piano recordings and electronic manipulations would go on to become the heart of Atlas. In the remainder of 2021 and 2022, with time spent between Berlin and London, Halo recorded additional guitar, violin and vibraphone, as well as acoustic instrumentation from friends and collaborators including saxophonist Bendik Giske, violinist James Underwood, cellist Lucy Railton and vocalist Coby Sey. All of these sounds were shaped, melted, and re-composed into the arrangements, their acoustic origins rendered uncanny.

Despite the album’s harmonic density and sonic sleight-of-hand, it nevertheless remains active, unfolding with focus and purpose. On opening track ‘Abandon’, sustained swells emerge through clouds of tape hiss, before romantic strings and punctuating keys break the mood, melting into abstraction. ‘Naked to the Light’ is a muggy juxtaposition of florid piano melodies and glittering strings that sounds both tender and out-of-body. ‘Sick Eros’ meanwhile takes its cues from Italian auteur Antonioni’s troubled couples, using dissonant strings to mirror their interpersonal discord. At its most enchanting, the album sounds like a lost Miyazaki soundtrack, like on the disarming album standout, the recorded-in-one-take piano ballad ‘Belleville’, or the hallucinatory interlude, ‘Sweat, Tears or the Sea’. By the time we reach the title track, Halo has whisked us away to the desert, driving through the sunset with lilting, Hollywood orchestration that bends in the dry heat. And in the end, we’re brought back to reality, with ‘Earthbound’’s cautious drones and melted saxophone.

In short, Atlas is road trip music for the subconscious. With repeated listens, it is a record that can leave a deep sensorial impression on the listener, akin to walking at dusk in a dark forest. Its humor and sharp focus would dispel any notions of sentimentality. Completely distinct from the rest of Halo’s catalog, Atlas is an album that thrives in the quietest places, rejecting bombast and embracing awe.

Fitting that it’s the debut release on her new record label, whose slogan parallels the mood and atmosphere of the album: Awe is something you feel when confronted with forces beyond your control: nature, the cosmos, chaos, human error, hallucinations.