In the beginning, there was music—a connection made in the abstract, a message encoded in waves, only readable by the soul. The sound of the cosmos: atmospheric music entangled with the sweet, velvet-like timbre of strings.
“We lock our dark halves deep in the basement of our souls, but darkness always finds a way of seeping through the cracks” is both the title and testament of Ostel’s new album. It is an album of emotionally rich music, standing on the borders of neoclassical, ambient, and experimental genres.
The expressive quality of the album is truly remarkable. While the music may not feature catchy melodies or hooks, its overall sense is inviting. It’s as if the music places you in an isolation tank, making you hover in nothingness and slowly revealing images of the past, present, and possible future.
The blend of electronic pads and synths with acoustic instruments such as saxophone, violin, and cello, along with the occasional use of the human voice, gives Ostel the opportunity to craft melancholic atmospheres—an opportunity he seizes masterfully. The music navigates between sanity and insanity, melancholy and serenity, past and future, tension and tranquility. The constant contrasts in melody, harmony, and orchestration create a sense of battle—a struggle against darkness, a fight to stay sane.
I wrote this album during the most complex and dark period of my life so far, with so many things happening around me, turning my world upside down. In the midst of impermanence and uncertainty, I had to reboot myself physically and mentally. My brain burned to ashes, and I had to slowly rebuild it again somehow.
This is how the composer describes his work, and the music clearly reflects those feelings. Even without his explanation, the listener can easily trace the album’s dramatic arc. It begins with calm in “Dandelion” and plunges into darkness with the second track, “Everything Fades.” From there, the melancholy deepens. It’s hard, if not impossible, to imagine birds singing or water flowing through a beautiful spring forest while listening to pieces like “Lounge Chat with My Inner Demons” or “Tormented Souls,” or those that follow.
The darkness enveloping the music is chilling. It consumes the listener, extinguishes hope, and forces us to confront reality—things will happen to you, and there is nothing you can do. This is a clear sign of the mastery of the composer who has taken all the tools in his disposal to successfully tell his story and take the listener to the world he has crafted.
But before the end, hope returns. From the tenth track, “Soft Melody of Never-Ending Chaos,” the music begins to guide us back to the light, returning us to the earth and offering a glimmer of hope.
As we move through the final tracks, the music gradually sheds its darkness, until the 13th piece, “The Space Between the Cracks,” creates a feeling of homecoming, echoing the atmosphere of the album’s opening.
“Deliverance” closes the album with a distant, low-cut effect that evokes a sense of being far away. The final track leaves us alone with our own thoughts, guiding us only from the background.
In the end, the music doesn’t conclude neatly. We fade into a distorted sound and end on an ascending note, with a feeling of incompletion. But, in my view, this is what makes the album a masterpiece. Ostel isn’t telling a drama or a story with a happy ending. This is a tragedy, and like all tragedies, in the end we are left with a cathartic release.
The distressing journey and its resolution offers us a new perspective. We get introduced to a world, depart from safety and consumed by darkness, finally get a glimpse of hope, we feel empathy, and we go back to the beginning, where there was only music.
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