Words like ‘dreamy’ or ‘dreamlike’ tend to be bandied about a lot in music writing – quite often it just means they threw some reverb on it. You’re unlikely, however, to encounter another album this year quite so powerfully oneiric (word of the day) as the new LP from Toronto-based composer Nick Storring on Orange Milk Records. It seems to imperceptibly shift between different levels of consciousness, instilling both a sense of wonder and of unease at where the music might take you next. Passages of romantic, orchestral elegance (Storring has described the work as a personal homage to ’70s soulstress Roberta Flack) fall away to reveal undercurrents of electroacoustic, even microtonal tension. I’ll admit that my frame of reference for such abstract yet emotionally stirring work is a bit limited – maybe think Paddy McAloon’s heartbreaking 2004 classic ‘I Trawl The Megahertz’ if his lonely wireless had picked up theta brain activity rather than late-night talk radio.
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