Enya – Queen City Sounds and Art

&Tilly’s video for “In Circles” was shot entirely on iPhone but its color palette and textural detail looks like something that could be part of an A24 film set in parallel universe. We see a figure seeming to be floating on and in azure waters with visuals of luminous, aquatic invertebrates floating gracefully about and a shoreline of darkened trees. The music itself is elegant layers of processed piano, sublimely subtle guitar and ethereal percussive sounds and hushly melodious vocals. Perhaps even plucked violin to give it all an even more classical sensibility that lends the song a timeless aspect like something that could have come from a more pop 90s New Age alternative music realm for fans of Enya and Loreena McKennitt or newer artists like Cate Le Bon or Julia Holter. But &Tilly’s sound is also in the realm of dream pop but with more than usual mastery of sonic details masterfully orchestrated. Watch the video for “In Circles” on YouTube and follow &Tilly at the links provided.

&Tilly on TikTok

Dominic Sen’s luminously melodic single “Prayer” from the album Apparition (released) June 9, 2023 embodies the nature of prayer itself rather than a statement on its efficacy or lack thereof. An intention cast into the universe or to a divine being without a guarantee of fulfillment of the wish. And in the song the vocals seem to spiral outward and float on a spiraling drift of tone over shuffling, textural percussion like New Age music for a cosmic waiting room in an elevator to any number of life outcomes in some kind of strange virtual reality RPG. The song ends as it started without full resolution which is a little like life itself. But the song itself has its gorgeously beautiful aspects and sustains a hopeful spirit like something that might have been a proper sequel to something from Enya’s 1991 album Shepherd Moons. Watch the lyric video to “Prayer” on YouTube and follow Dominic Sen at the links provided.