Nurture is the result of an intercontinental collaboration between Marine Eyes (Cynthia Bernard) and IKSRE (Phoebe Dubar). The magical music that they make being built around Nature, field recordings, which they bounced back and forth between their respective homes in Los Angeles and Melbourne. The two musicians employed a dizzying array of both electrical and traditional instruments to modify this source material, rendering it pretty much unrecognizable. Only on Rainforest Dawn are twists of twittering birds clearly heard. Only on Bones Knowing does the wildlife really grow wilder. The album as a whole has the feel of a sustained sigh. A serene exhale of yogini breath. Healing music as medicinal as meeting the day with a mediative stretch. 

A shimmering warm, ethereal vapour, whose calming caress is like that of comforting angels, personally it had me nestling neck-deep in nostalgia. Listening rapt, wrapped as if someone were cradling me, attempting to remove all my cares. Flashing me back 5 decades to my mother’s safe, protective bosom. The lyric-less lullaby-like harmonies holding me, allowing me to finally relax. To the point where I felt that I could sleep for a week. 

A soothing sea, with undercurrents of serious sub-bass, in places, such as San Francisquito Moonrise, there’s a ceremonial stillness that recalls Popol Vuh on a trip to Tibet. There are piano poems / prayers, beautiful bowed string sonnets, ringing singing bowls, and drones from a buzzing sitar-like shruti box, but I wouldn’t call it new age. While lighter in tone, the set reminds me more of Grouper’s Ruins. Roaming from room to room, travelling from treasure to treasure, in a sacred memory palace. 

Marine Eyes + IKSRE’s Nurture is out now, on Past Inside The Present.