Vague Imaginaires - L'île D'or (2020)

The music of Grenoble gardener Denis Morin aka Vague Imaginaires cross-pollinates modal synthetics, equatorial ambience, and drum circle minimalism into ecological fantasias of “natural forces and enchanted worlds,” seven of which comprise his spacious debut, L'Île D'or.

Recorded in anticipation of the birth of his daughter (an experience Morin likens to “an ancestral journey”), the album alternates between ritual and lullaby, spirit vine questing and chill-out tent meditation. Guyana forest field recordings and the sound of springtime birds color the songs with wind and wildlife, evoking lagoons clouded in mist and steam, overgrown paths winding through twilit jungles. It’s an intimate, emotive vision of archipelagos and mirages, epiphany and escape, free-ranging across islands of golden light of the mind.