My friend Robin apparently appears on this in a number of regards, which I found out via his Instagram story screenshotting a Pitchfork news article. It is weird to see your friends’ names mentioned in places like Pitchfork, but the overriding emotion is one of pride and happiness.
I was otherwise unaware of Old Fire, so this is my first exposure to them. It’s very pretty, in a way that I think that’s maybe underselling it, or feels someway simplistic to describe as “pretty”. It’s textured, lulling in place rather than transporting.
If you ask Spotify, this is the first album I’ve listened to this year. If you ask it carefully, it will tell you that the first song I deliberately listened to in 2024 was Jigsaw Falling Into Place by Radiohead. That is supplemental, not anything else, to the fact that the first song I heard in 2024 was Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. It’s a journey.
Every year, and this will be no exception, I intend on keeping a running playlist of highlights of albums I’ve listened to this year. I’ve added Void V to it from this, as I go. That’s not to say that the other songs are more or less good, just what the first instinct was. They’re the kind of pieces that require more than one listen to truly be able to delineate, and that’s ok.
I would like to be able to lie down with my eyes closed in the dark and listen to Intentions without falling asleep. Or maybe a walk in the twilight, not quite dark, through not quite a forest. It’s - again, worrying about the connotations - meditative, in a sense. The plucked guitars meander without purpose amongst the more ambient Rhodes. I was about to say it soothes, but then Void VI has started and I’m not sure that’s the case. We’ll see.