It’s by design that Cold Blue has taken the longer road back to back to LP life. For a man with as much affinity for the current season as he, it’s significant that he refuses to work in regular album cycles. Indeed, ‘desire’ remains the only point on his production compass. As such, it’s been six rotations since the release of Winter, his debut longform, and one which set a new high-water mark in electronic music purity and definition.
Mountain, his sophomore work, is certainly a continuum of that, but also one that, over time, may prove to be his artistic zenith. It’s the product of a creator who places studio craft over song, atmospheres beyond clubfloor furore, … and patience quite simply, above all other concerns. Now, that patience, both his and yours, is rewarded through the release of the extraordinary Mountain.
If 2019’s Winter captured Cold Blue at his most expansive, then Mountain finds him in sharper relief more distilled and even more deliberate in its pursuit of a singular vision. As Winter went widescreen and was mapped out across a full season, in title and tone, Mountain pointedly looks up as opposed to out, tracking the dynamics of an ascent.
“Ascending alpine peaks has been a life-long passion, providing inspiration for music and life. This album, 4 years in the making, expresses my ongoing personal inner mountain journey of growing and healing, of fearing and loving, of letting go and reconnecting.” – Cold Blue
The album also embodies the idea of ‘music as a wordless language’. Titles aside, you’ll find next to no lyrics carved into this ‘Mountain’. Yet it speaks fluently – its vocabulary built from sonic textures and pressures; its ‘story’ told almost exclusively though instrumental frequencies.
It opens in the low-lying ether of “We Are Made Of Love”, a track that establishes a “base camp” of sorts, dialling in the album’s feel. That’s chased by the haunting Flugelhorns of “Sunday Kiss”, which, as quickly, light an upwards path through ‘Mountain’s foothills. In turn that begets the developmental triplet of (most recent single) “Into The Rain”, “Storm”, and “Into The Wild”: tracks which ‘speak’ in clear terms about the musical terrain and temperatures they encounter.
As with most climbs, there are moments where a short descent becomes necessary, so as to scale higher still. In that respect tracks like “When Time Stands Still”, “Without You”, and “Escape” explore that shift — placing further emphasis on the airs and atmospheres around the tracks’ clefts and drops. By the time “White Lights”, “Into The Sun” and “Radiate” crest, Cold Blue’s titular summit is well in view. Having reached its apex with “For A Miracle”, tonally, the album closes much as it begins, through the chillier signals of “For A Miracle”.
Winter is an outstanding album, crafted over years as opposed to months, and one that’ll remind you why the longer climb is always worth it in the end.
