I started writing a previous version of this post where I spoke about feeling that quality conversation had been on the decline over the past few years. That, on a general level, conversation seems a lot harder and people tend to talk at (rather than to) you, as opposed to engaging in a dialogue. I don’t feel I’m alone in this observation but the impacts of it seem to thrum in me often, a feeling of a lack of care and interest, of harmony.

In an interesting moment of synchronicity, I’ve been on a training course at work over the last few months and found myself on the last session recently where almost this exact thing came up, albeit in a different context. And my trainer said something early out the gate during the morning start that really resonated with me throughout the day, and has been weighing on me since. He said:

Listening is making meaning

How simple, how poetical! It is one thing in this world to speak and offload, and entirely another to listen and receive. Often forgotten in these (unintentional I’m sure) monologues and info-dumps is the person opposite who is taking and digesting this narrative we’re spilling on them, who through their mere presence is turning our inner world into something tangible and sensical. Indeed, what is more human than the act of conversation, its ebbs and flows and intimacies and extractions that make real the interior thought. How are we coming to forget the duality of such a plainly multiparty activity?

I relish the moments I’m able to have good conversations lately, those who take the time to invest in what I have to say as well and keep the flow moving and turning as I do the same. They are little rays of sunshine that keep me from thinking “why bother” with the hopelessly poor alternatives.

I think perhaps that Mogard and Irisarri’s Where Light Pauses is in service to loftier atmospheres and philosophies, but it seems to me that good company is in short supply, and it’s one of the few things in this world that seem to obscure somewhat the ugliness we live within. However brief that might be, or one-sided at times notwithstanding, there is light in others, there is light together.

This is 41 minutes of ambient dronescapes: if you’re familiar with either of these titans within the scene this should come as no surprise, and if you’re not then it would behoove you to listen to this, and then their respective discographies immediately. Moments like “In A Quiet Radiance”, whose surging tones and angelic voice elapse as daybreak spills over rooftops into an eager world, or perhaps the words of an erudite conversationalist cutting through an awkward pause like some shining knight, are amongst the most beautiful of their careers.

In truth it itself is (appropriately) the only real moment of sparkling clarity and lightness nestled amongst bristling and humming soundscapes. Opener “In The Eastern Wild” for instance seems to chug like a beleaguered diesel engine struggling uphill during its mid-section, a social pump tiredly fighting against gravity’s losses and the weight of its expectant cargo.

Interior “A Blue Descent” rocks on moody strings, chords mounting as deep sea waves form up to crash on a shoreline resigned to their relentless arrival, all dark stone and pummelled crags. Elsewhere, penultimate “Of Blessed Ages” vibrates as static washes shift across the face of its synthetics, never standing still, always moving contiguously one moment to the next as speech and experience and emotion smear out.

It’s not enough to just talk, saying things is easy. Listening, and to be listened to, is a sharing that is foundational to the human experience, to connection. These moments today feel more akin to searchlights probing the darkness than floodlit parks, wandering beams that come upon us but momentarily. Yet when they do catch us in the wilderness their light is an ascendent one, and reminds us of the meaning of feeling valued.

The album releases on the 26th June 2026.