Iceblink - Carpet Cocoon (2020)

Certainly well-enough versed in a wide variety of musical forms to know her chosen stage name may or may not be a nod to the Cocteau Twins, Iceblink is the instrumental side project of Minneapolis club pioneer Lynn Avery, Carpet Cocoon her debut album under the moniker after a three-track EP of “bedroom New Age” – an organic sound that draws from numerous sources to land the unique long-player as some kind of babbling library-music exotica.

Featuring contribution from Cole Pulice and Mitch Stahlman, Carpet Cocoon is predominantly built on intimate, folkish acoustic plucking, Avery’s fingers audible on the fret, soft saxophone tugging your eyelids down to half-mast. Often an abstract aural collage that sounds like an orchestral tune-up, evocative strumming conjures first-draft spaghetti Western scores, wind chimes and playful percussion woven together into a more soothing tapestry.

Up and down, Avery demonstrates her passion for found sounds too, an old tape of happy voices blending into lolloping music-box melodies before dropping away to melancholy minimalism as if all the joy had suddenly been sucked from the world. Overdoing the Xanax in response, the bird song, flutes and gently moseying synths of “Microsong” are then extremely Zen, the impressive closer, “Collette”, doubling down on the chattering ambience of someone like Celer, so too the woozy, subtly swelling repeats of someone like Grouper, the track sinking you back into the carpet to stare at the ceiling, the very comfort blanket Avery herself alludes the album to be.