Cassette Review // Pale Spring "CYGNUS" (Doom Trip)

$8 //
Edition of 100 //
https://doomtrip.bandcamp.com/album/cygnus //

Just based on the music alone, this could be one of the best cassettes I've ever heard.    It has a minimal electronic feel to it overall, but there are a lot of other moving parts underneath it all where even though you can just hear the beats and synths, those bleeps and bloops, there really is quite a bit going on.   If this existed purely as an instrumental cassette, it would be right on and I would be rocking it for sure. 

But then it adds in the vocals of Emily Scott, which come out in their own way and it feels like this combination of Polly Scattergood, Enya and PJ Harvey.   But, ultimately, this isn't the type of music I've heard before and as such I can't quite come up with that proper comparison.   I imagine people singing in an opera and then classical music being played on piano and someone saying "What if we combined the two?"   There had to be a time before it was done and this feels that groundbreaking and monumental.

There are these guitar strums and vocals by both Emily Scott and Chris Taylor on "Old Sounds" which is the closest to a band sound you'll get on here, but then the final song somehow has this feeling of the 1990's-- something from a time of Mariah Carey and PM Dawn but not quite the same as all that either.    This cassette, this sound, really just stands out in a way all its own, unlike anything I've heard before yet with somewhat familiar sounds coming together to forge a new sound.

Whenever I hear instrumental music- and I think most everyone feels this way- I always wonder what it would sound like with vocals added to it.   Now, the instrumental music itself could be A+ (It might even be better than if you added vocals to it) but I still sometimes wonder.  I feel like this is one of those instances, with Pale Spring, where you wonder what the instrumental-electronic-hip hop would sound like with vocals and it just so happens that you're in luck because some of the most soulful of voices are combined within these beats.