Strange Skies

Intent on conveying a musical experience of complete immersion, the M. Persson: Sounds album, Strange Skies, envelops its listener’s body like a constantly-shifting aura.
Gorgeously represented by the cover picture of a barren field before a rainstorm, the opening title track sets the rustic mood of Strange Skies with subtle, lush string tones that gradually graze across the sonic landscape as if imitating a cloud formation. Harmonies fade in and out slowly, coalescing into dense frameworks of sound, unveiling for the listener a homogenous yet ever-changing horizon.
The album begins to segue into each of its compositions, and it becomes evident that M. Persson: Sounds has not crafted a collection of songs, but a soundscape series of unparalleled scope. Although each of the individual tracks on Strange Skies embodies its own unique character, instead of viewing them as solitary pieces of music, it is helpful to imagine each one as a single movement of a grand, unified, and slowly-evolving work. Every composition is like the still frame of a film — the essence of each piece, as well as the entire album, are only understood when experienced in a perfectly ordered sequence.
Of all of Lunar Flower’s releases, Strange Skies is perhaps the most truly ambient in nature. Comprised almost entirely of droning soundscapes, the album’s uniform quality prevents the listener from distinguishing isolated sounds within the music. It is five tracks into the album, on “Before the End,” until we are able to identify a warm, romantically-performed piano gliding through the mix. This unique virtue undercuts any superficial attempts to deconstruct the compositional methods employed by M. Persson: Sounds, allowing his music simply to cascade across the environment in which it is heard.
At turns joyous and mournful, ominous and hopeful, the dense harmonies of Strange Skies by M. Persson: Sounds are like whimsical winds tossing through an open country field, offering to us all that we wish to carry of the earth’s many treasures.