The Cartridge Family - Silent Spring
Right off the bat I have to say I love the album cover. Not sure where you found it but that's a very nice find.
1. Silent Spring: This track establishes a very serene atmosphere with some beautiful acoustic guitar playing. You hear all kinds of soothing sounds of birds and nature that cycle through with enough variation to keep yourself intrigued throughout. Around the halfway point things change up with a beat coming in and a very cool piano loop starting up. I don't like how the percussion here sounds so plastic which goes against the natural, organic feel of the rest of the track too much. The beat brings in some more variation after a few cycles which makes it sound a lot better though. Overall a nice, serene opener that I like a lot.
2. Sprawl: A very electronic, sort of abrasive track as a follow up. I wonder if you're trying to juxtapose more nature-y sounds with fake sounds to create a theme. This one's kind of spooky honestly, I really like the vocal sounds in this context. There's some parts that are fairly jazzy but for the most part the track is fronted by those electronics that move in and out and get all glitchy every now and then. The ending is a tad underwhelming, I wonder if you could have come up with a better outro for this track.
3. The Clearing: Gorgeous ambient intro. The rest of the track just kind of has me floating along, I'm enjoying it but I'm not being blown away by anything. But obviously that's the point of this one, to be a very pleasant slow piece and it's extremely effective at that.
4. Light of Day: Another just sort of soothing slow track that has me floating along. I really like when the piano comes in halfway through. Things start building up around the piano with the percussion and synths and it's a really neat effect.
5. Chime Hour: Wow a huge change of pace, and I
LOVE the whimsical feel of this intro. Kind of feels like this could be the background in a video games where you're exploring a strange forest, like Fungi Forest from DK64 maybe. The "voices" or whatever that come in later are a nice effect that contrast with the rest of the track in an interesting way. Sick track, probably my favorite.
6. New Dawn: This one flew by me kind of. I liked it but can't think of a whole lot to say, the vibe was nice.
7. Ashes: Absolutely loving the start of this. The echoing guitars create such a cool overall sound that washes over you. ****ing beautiful. Things build up to a really nice full sound with a cool electric guitar melody. Killer track, damn this one's just awesome.
8. Sheperds: I kind of zone out for this one. Some neat effects and atmosphere here but it's similar to a lot of the rest of the album and didn't blow me away like Ashes did. Those two could have maybe been swapped on the track listing to create a more memorable finale.
My overall verdict is that this album is very good, but four of the tracks or so are just kind of zone-out tracks for me while some of the others are engaging experiences. This is an interesting culmination of those two kinds of songs but it creates for a somewhat uneven experience. But there definitely isn't a bad track on this thing, so I'm really just discussing cohesiveness at this point. Great work overall, and Ashes is my favorite track of yours that I've heard.