With most music, the vocals communicate in very definite language, able to conjure ideas and images in our minds through the power that words possess. With a lot of ambient shoegaze and drifting dream pop, the vocal line often sits in the mix in such a way, subdued and sunken below the sonic waterline, so that it almost becomes more part of the music itself—the art of voice as an instrument, if you like.
And so it is here with Sterile Cuckoo’s Until All The Flocks Are Gathered. There is nothing solid to be found here, no absolutes, only the billowing of ever-changing sonics and the drifting of formless sounds. If there are musical structures in the traditional sense, then they are built to be unfathomable, changeable, and unpredictable.
Across eight tracks, we are left with only the feelings evoked by the music and the mercurial titles to help us navigate this place. We can only make best guesses rather than draw certain conclusions about the songs’ intent.
We can only assume that “The Ghost of Saint Helena” deals with exile and longing, the aging thoughts of its most historically famous resident, and the sense of isolation palpable in its dreaming sonics. We are left to wonder at the twin lives of the disembodied vocalists found floating around the fractured soundscapes of “Marienberg.” We can only guess the meaning behind the shimmering forms woven together to form the title track.
But this is not an album that gives answers; if anything, we find ourselves begging even more questions. But that is the point. Like the musical equivalent of a Buddhist koan, we are asked to muse, consider, and think deeply, to enter meditative and introspective states, not to find meaning in the songs themselves, they are just a doorway, but to think about our own lives and the world around us, our actions and our place in it.
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