Lynn Avery describes her new album as her “comfort album, music to retreat to in the winter.” Avery, aka Iceblink, has made Carpet Cocoon as a bedroom new age album. Stitched together with nylon string guitar, synthesizers, flutes, and filtered saxophones, Iceblink’s Carpet Cocoon has a very pastoral vibe. A mixture of organic and processed, the earthiness interspersed with the otherworldly makes for a beautifully ornate album. One where you quickly let go of the outside world and let yourself exist in an almost child-like wonder within the songs of Iceblink’s Carpet Cocoon.
Musically this record could be categorized as new age, but I feel it’d be a disservice to Avery to lay it solely in that section of the record store. Something like “Cellophane in the Bath” is reminiscent musically of early Sufjan Stevens. There’s a homespun, folks-y, DIY quality to that track that feels more singer/songwriter than new age enlightenment, minus the singer part. Same with the sublime “August Von Koenig” with its melancholy lean and almost far east touches. “Microsong” tows the line between elegant and noise. Fluttering flutes intermingling with synth touches that sometimes overflows into ambient noise.
Of course, tracks like “Healer”, “Vocoder Upright”, and “Dialoghi” lay a more obscure sonic track to follow. They sound as if a microphone was placed secretly in a room while someone works on ideas. A smattering of notes, pitches, and ideas rise amongst the noise of creation. There’s a calm resolution with last track “Collette”. Delay adds a dreaminess to the strummed guitar. There’s a finality in the simplicity of this piece. It feels like a resolution to everything that came before, and an opening door to what will come after.
Iceblink’s Carpet Cocoon is indeed a comforting album to put on on those frigid Midwestern evenings. A warm pocket of melody to warm your heart and mind when the furnace can’t keep up.
7.8 out of 10
Carpet Cocoon is out today, January 24th, via Moon Glyph Records. Buy it here.
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