Like a fistful of sand tossed to the wind, Ingri Høyland’s new album Ode to Stone generally threatens to vanish completely. There are seldom quite a lot of tones enjoying at any given second; apart from her collaborator Ida Urd’s electrical bass, the provenance of her sounds is commonly unclear. Are they synthesizers? Suggestions? Aural illusions caught on tape? They flicker like candlelight, tremble just like the final leaves left on a barren department. For lengthy stretches, nothing occurs, apart from the decay of two or three notes fading to silence. However Ode to Stone will not be minimalist, precisely. That time period—any “-ism,” in truth—feels too structural, too realizing, for music this vulnerable to drifting.

This natural, aleatory high quality marks a big shift from Høyland’s final album, There is a Lady Inside My Mind Who Desires to Die, the place the Norwegian-born, Copenhagen-based musician grappled with anguish and vulnerability in stark, shadowy digital pop. The place that album was deeply private—the primary observe was referred to as “Ego, Bitch”—Ode to Stone decenters the human. Working in collaboration with Urd, fellow ambient musician Sofie Birch, and visible artist Lea Dulditte Hestelund, Høyland created the album in response to an open name for work themed round Denmark’s nationwide parks. She selected to deal with Husby Klitplantage, a rolling dune panorama fringed by pine forests on the nation’s west coast.

Peruse photographs of the place whereas listening to the album, and Ode to Stone’s abstraction snaps into focus. Høyland’s delicate, rounded tones mimic the broad sweep of the dunes, the patterns of wind combing throughout seagrass, the silver of the winter solar on a flat, grey sea. She has spoken of her curiosity in capturing the “cohesive power” of that coastal wilderness: the interaction of the weather, and the interdependencies which have developed over eons. To supply a glimpse of deep time in a half hour of music is not any simple activity, however Ode to Stone does an admirable job, regardless of its humble, understated supplies.

“Pressured by its very weight” opens the document with held tones and the faintest shimmer of melody; its languid tempo and refusal of something like a payoff really feel like an invite to decelerate and clear one’s ideas. “Reminiscence in hand” dissolves additional into the air, a delicate explosion of digital birdsong. Such kinds are too vague to observe intently; the thoughts wanders, not unpleasantly. However do you have to refocus your consideration on the music, you is perhaps shocked at how a lot selection there may be. The impact is akin to the best way {that a} seemingly drab patch of seaside, below shut examination, begins to disclose a microscopic infinity.