"Inspired by science fiction and it's relation to modern life", Zen Zsigo, more commonly known in the UK tape scene as Cremation Lily, searches for parallels between the worlds we create and the world we inhabit on Winter Orbit, an album of impenetrable atmosphere and infinitely patient compositions that slowly uncurl like smokey tendrils, transporting the listener to a place both unknowable and strangely familiar, like a glimpse into a mirrored future already lived.
Flickering opens the albums A-side with a billowing, funereal drone that rises with the immensity of a towering wall of darkness, monolithic and all-consuming, sucking up all traces of light while emitting a cold vibrational dread. The piece builds with unstoppable momentum, clearing a path with waves of gravelly distortion, leaving behind fragments of crystalline synth that shimmer like the muted reflection of old stained glass. Just as Flickering begins to feel on the brink of collapse, crushed under the weight of its own sheer immensity, Settling breathes deep and spaciously, clearing the dust and debris with nurturing tones that hang suspended mid air like a cool mist, sculptured by the wind into dreamlike forms that never quite disperse.
Foundation, Florilegium, with its sustained, metallic glimmer, rings skyward like the hammered chimes of an infinite, celestial lullaby; a song written in comets, traced along the night sky and leaving their imprint carved across the horizon in glowing trails. Meanwhile, drifting synth pads swim alongside in a romantic, dreamlike quality, half formed and translucent, lending a soft, ethereal glow to their surroundings by mere proximity.
Throughout Winter Orbit's duration is a sense of both sparsity and balance, the compositions containing an elegance in restraint, allowing the brushstrokes of each individual element to be accentuated by that which comes next with the focus of a limited palette in the hands of expert capability. On Slightly Tender, opposing tones float side by side in balanced coexistence; a long, ascending ring that sounds as if set to the vibrational frequency of the universe, while a soft bed of synth pad strings swirl with the comforting nostalgia of a childhood memory. Sustained guitars feedback in momentary ripples of distortion like rips in a curtain, beams of magnificent light pouring in from somewhere beyond reality itself. The album comes to a definitive and cathartic finality with soft piano notes that fall like drops of cosmic energy, the song of an entire civilization sent rippling out into space in an infinite echo destined to travel the stars for all eternity with one simple message; "We exist. Do you?".