The hugely talented Phoebe Dubar, aka I Keep Seeing Rainbows Everywhere, extends her collaborative net with a new set produced with ambient artist, anthéne, an alias of Brad Deschamps. The album, entitled, Seasons Shifting, is out now on Brad’s Polar Seas, and if you’re looking for “music for healing” then this is the real deal. 

The title is a nod to the contrasting timezones / climates between Australia and Canada, where the pieces were jointly, but remotely composed. The music reflects Phoebe’s time spent caring for her mother, as she battled, and happily beat, cancer, and the world as a whole was emerging from pandemic and lockdowns. Attempting to return to “normal”. A series of delicate drone-based sound designs, the 8 tracks are lifted out of any idea of shadow, and way out of the ordinary, by Pheobe’s accompanying hushed choral harmonies. Wordless hymns and chants that totally “humanise” the work. Summoning the same sort of lullabies that the sirens sang, promising paradise, irresistibly luring sailors to their doom. Like a sugar-free novo new age reimagining of Iasos’ Angels Of Comfort. 

Woven within, zithers zing, and 6-string microtones spin backwards and forwards. Singing bowls ring serenely. The title track features fanfare-like frequencies. On Lungs, a kalimba slowly reveals itself as a source. Falling Stars is a sublime shot of Arvo Pärt / Spiegel im Spiegel minimalism. Elegant, emotional.

On the closer, Cumulus, the instruments are more clearly identifiable, despite the treated textures, echo and loops. Using strings and a weathered reed to construct a peaceful Beethoven-like pastoral. Horare describes a scene darker, more nocturnal. Somewhere just before dawn. A rainforest floor, or a Mojave horizon, bathed in deep, daybreak blue. The song’s atmosphere packed with the drama of an Eno / Lanois production. A sense of something epic. If there’s a standout, then it’s, perhaps, Walk, Then Fly. Rising from a field recorded frog / cicada chorus, it generates this gentle but kind of tactile, sorta sentient, resonance, that stretches to surround, hug, everything within reach. As its psychedelic organ shimmer increases in volume, becoming less passive, more proactively protective. A sonic spell to drive evil spirits away. 

IKSRE & anthéne’s Seasons Shifting is out now on Polar Seas.