Crystal Dorval from Vancouver, Canada, has been making healing, distorted rug-gaze music from a coastal mindset all her own since 2011. Natural Phenomena is her second album, and it echoes 2013’s self-titled effort in its isolationist origins, as the record emerged slowly across a nine-month retreat alone on a farm on Vancouver Island: “Some days I would only add one tiny guitar line or keyboard texture and that would be it for the day… it was a long process.”
However grueling and gradual the method, what accrued is gold—ten of Dorval’s deepest dreamdives, starry ambient pools and dissolved guitar designs, ghosted through a lens of grey-skied pop. Songs wax and wane across faded rainbows of guitar, sunrise keyboards, looped percussion and vocal ocean-spray. Behind Dorval’s gauze of warm noise glows something pure and newer than new age: “My hope is that these positive feelings will be communicated sonically, or in essence, and will be enriching for listeners.” A high height for a climbing talent; White Poppy blooms on cliffs of light.
However grueling and gradual the method, what accrued is gold—ten of Dorval’s deepest dreamdives, starry ambient pools and dissolved guitar designs, ghosted through a lens of grey-skied pop. Songs wax and wane across faded rainbows of guitar, sunrise keyboards, looped percussion and vocal ocean-spray. Behind Dorval’s gauze of warm noise glows something pure and newer than new age: “My hope is that these positive feelings will be communicated sonically, or in essence, and will be enriching for listeners.” A high height for a climbing talent; White Poppy blooms on cliffs of light.
TRACK LISTING
1. Confusion
2. Wild Mind
3. Sublimity
4. Exotic Realms
5. Midnight Sun
6. Aurora
7. Telepathic Love
8. Ebb And Flow
9. Mermaids
10. Arctic Rose
11. Clam Happy (Non-LP Bonus Track)