Kara-Lis Coverdale – From Where You Came
The Canadian composer’s fourth album is a beautiful collection of ambient compositions that explore the interconnectedness of all things
Kara-Lis Coverdale is a composer in constant conversation with the world around her. On her extraordinary new record, From Where You Came, she creates rich, electroacoustic compositions that capture the ever-shifting currents of existence. 'Everything you know is real / I'm sorry, life is beautiful', she chants on album opener Eternity; a mournful prelude to a record that otherwise teems with life. Inspired by 19th-century programmatic music – where compositions evoked moods, stories, or sensations – the album’s tone is largely uniform, but its mood is mercurial, with each track operating on its own emotional frequency.
Flickers in the Air of Night seethes and crackles with a primordial energy, whilst on Daze, flurries of processed woodwinds and waves of euphoria-inducing synths soar towards the heavens like the ghosts of lost memories. Freedom is both the album's centerpiece and climax: a song that revels in the space between spontaneity and impermanence, it balances Coverdale’s love for improvisation and spiritual jazz, with a classical sense of beauty and grandeur. Elsewhere, there’s a deeply charged technophilia to Offload Flip’s glacial beats, which steer Coverdale’s sound towards unfamiliar territory. Closing composition The Ceremonial Entrance of Colour guides us gently back home, completing the album’s cycle of transformation.
Listen to: Daze, Coming Around, Freedom