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Apr 26, 2017With this album, English has created something awe-inspiring: strange, elemental, and profound. Very little music so masterfully evokes the towering, savage beauty of the natural world, and the insignificance of man in the face of its enormity and power.
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Mar 16, 2017As a result, it’s not only timely, but also timelessly painful, beautiful, and powerful.
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Feb 16, 2017This isn’t background noise, it demands your attention through its rich and layered compositions. But it's never overly fussy, rather it’s maximalism through a less is more approach.
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MojoFeb 9, 2017A vast swirling dystopia of euphoric white noise. [Mar 2017, p.97]
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Feb 9, 2017Something political and socially aware, but rather than aid it stands adrift, documenting the prostrate torment that tears through most bereft of power and consumes by the traumatic fallout, all delivered in a sensory wave, something that absorbs and immerses, envelops, is inescapable, yet never lectures.
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Feb 9, 2017It’s invigorating and profound, mapping a sonic current which traverses moments of gently unfolding beauty (The Quietest Shore) and even brassy grandiosity (particularly on the widescreen projections of Exquisite Human Microphone).
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Mar 9, 2017The result is an album that feels personal but also universal.
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Mar 9, 2017The result is an album that feels personal but also universal.
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Feb 9, 2017Experimental works like this aren’t typically held up for their broad appeal, but the waves of static peace and disorienting swells that wash back and forth over Cruel Optimism communicate on an open plane where specific meaning is obscured but state of mind is apparent to anyone.