With “Island Lantern Festival”, Tony Frissore manages to soundtrack a specific kind of mental vacation I didn’t realize I was overdue for taking. Ostensibly an instrumental nod to the Lunar New Year and the hopefulness of renewal, this piece operates less like a celebration and more like a gentle exhalation. https://open.spotify.com/album/3n43BcxSnavYKC0wt28GNu?si=E_50eQ_lQomyHT1RsD2Jrg It starts wet with the actual crash of ocean waves before slowly drifting inland. I...

Listening to Cat Cork’s "Simple Song" is a funny thing; the title is a clever piece of misdirection, a plain brown wrapper on a package containing an entire life. This isn't some breezy, three-chord singalong for a lazy afternoon. It’s the sonic equivalent of discovering a shipwright’s meticulously drafted blueprint, detailing the construction of a human spirit from the first plank of childhood to...