“Colour Me In”. Furnishing and arranging a room. Shapes falling into place on the page. Just the idea. Delicacy in the instrumentation, and always that soothing voice. Floating, falling down in a whirlwind of abstractness and love and all things you can hold on to in life.

“Pendulum”. Drums giving us a square idea. Everything is square. The power is in the repetition. Caught between day and night. Force fields getting through to the music. You can hear it in her voice. The drums are ubiquitous. The force field is relenting. I am connecting to the music in a “unique” way, I am one. I already know the song, the trip I’m going to take, so I feel like the song is guiding me the right way. So much violence in the drums. Remnants of a force-field, of a voice…

“Before We Begin”. A characteristic introduction. A conclusion, zooming out on life. Gentle dabs from the bass. Trish speaking to the listener, confinding in them, just like she would give them life advice in other songs. A very eerie feeling, and a strange sense of time getting through to us now; her saying the words to us, each and every time a person listens to the song. Gone from one part of our world, ever-present in other parts. Gone from one channel, still present in the others.

“Valerie”. Are those birds chirping? Impossible to be quite sure, as I’m basked in warmth, an enveloping bliss. Sounds of nature, a very pastoral landscape depicted by very synthetic means. The warm comfort of the repeating guitar chords, more a landscape than an event; and more warmth added on top of it with Trish’s voice, crowning it. Beautifully haunting. We’re not really living in this world, are we… (Post-scriptum: I didn’t know it back then, but this song is actually named after the film “Valerie and Her Week of Wonders”, a fairytale in an ever-changing world)

“Man Is Not a Bird”. The stark violence contrasting with the sweetness of the previous song; the bassline underlying sadder undertones. The characteristic soundscape of the band present as ever. Thunderous echoes. Exquisite, hyperactive drumming set to a desolate landscape. Characteristics of the manor. The haunting continues. The most beautiful silence after “night in the inside”, and the most exquisite drum breaks. With “the lonely distance in time”, that single guitar chord liberating the imagination; omission is the most touching. Now in a duo, letting the listener take part in the song, letting the song and the listener connect even more intensely with that piece of shared beauty he only had a glimpse of, yet is invited to continue exploriing. A beautiful artistic gesture, powerful.

“Minim”. Bells. We are now outside, out of that house with its peculiar ambiance. The resounding of the world takes place through the fading down of the bass, omitting certain notes; stepping out of a terrain gracefully to step inside another. The beauty of the words. Language and voice indissociable; each one expressing the beauty of the other. That orgastic “ch” sound, emanation of the soul, channeling the intangible into a partly perceptible sound, us at the same time receiving and unable to explain the intangible. Ending on a return to the album theme.

“Lunch hour pops”. Decidedly more sanguine. Sweet melody lines, thrusting percussion, almost a fanfare. High sounds we try to make sense of, sometimes reminding us of chiming clocks, then distorting and making us doubt. Reaching out to the sky, ascending melody, lyrical references, high notes. A car stopping on gravel? Or is it my imagination? The excruciatingly painful high notes become a welcome bliss, darts of consciousness. A very visual song: “waiting on the stairs for a break in my mind”. Definite emphasis on the inside and the outside; metaphorically maybe? Inside the house or inside the body? Inside the mind?

“Black Umbrellas”. Ominous, threatening, robotic, devoid of any humanity, the ineluctable drive towards insanity.

“Ominous Cloud”. Birds chirping to one another in a very abstract form. Clouds responding to one another, visually or metaphysically. Not “na-o”, stress on the language. “I have to get away”, with tiny almost imperceptible breaks in the background accompaniment. Echoed with the “owowowo”. Again the connivence with the listener, just chanting the melody line, the listener knowing what is in its place. Allowing for graceful sliding.

“Distorsion”. Warehouse echoes. A flute painting the landscape one element at a time; letting the elements respond to one another; the drumming firmly rooting us in the jungle or some wild savage place, yet natural and feeling good. Fresh hair in the lungs, you are fully awake, everything is green, with tall trees surrounding you, yet distant enough for you to feel free and with space. Distorsion coming along the way, towards the end. A leitmotiv in the album, its imprint on the songs, fastening them to a framework.

“Oh How I Miss You”. The distant chorus of memories, of wind, of a draught threatening to blow it all away, or is it symbolic of emotions rushing in? The song ending on the more masculine note. Brilliant, unique sounds.

“The Little Bell”. Back to lullabies with this one. Undercurrents of clock sounds and chimes at the end, getting more and more prominent. Getting from rythmic to field recordings, to field rcordings used in a rythmic fashion. Time triggering everything.

“Winter now”. Sweeter sounding, yet less innocent — yet just as lulling and maintaining the same mood. The chimes emphasising, giving force to certain words, giving force for the singer to continue. Falling quietly, and that lower additional note. The descending harmonic motion, going to the heart, surrounded by Winter, by ice. Gentle icicles falling down, snowflakes falling down onto our bare skin, the prickling sensation it provides. An expectant last note, leaving us questioning.

“Hawk”. A gentle lulling, a counter-balancing rhythm, a melody that hooks on you, a soothing sung melody. Bathing in bliss. Warped lullaby. Holding on to the melody while everything around is delightfully swirling. The only thing that makes sense, every note is perfect, everything is in its right place. The poignant melody takes the stage, overruns the rest. Delightful sounds, delightful timbres, finding beauty in instruments not of our world. Exquisite dissonances.

“Hawk”. Overflowing with emotions. “Some things just cannot be”, and the forcing, the note unexpectedly not working. Forcing again, trying hard to make it work, but no, it just won’t. Venturing in nostalgic emotional grounds, not knowing where they lead. The void, then the comeback to the charming reality.

“Minus two”. The epic conclusion. References to the previous songs: we get to experience each constituent of the atmosphere of the band, in its individuality, separate from the rest. This track is oblivious to time or space. A deconstruction, in all senses of the word.