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A Magazine for Sheffield

Isik Kural Maya's Night

Imbuing synthesised ambience with a childlike innocence and purity, Turkish songwriter Isik Kural specialises in soothing sounds and small emotions.


Released: 31 March 2021
Maya's Night

Originally from Istanbul and now residing in Glasgow, Kural’s second album, Maya’s Night, is his first with Sheffield-based experimental label Audiobulb. Developed as different scenes for an imaginary film of the same title, each track on Maya’s Night provides a slightly differently arranged but equally lovely moment of escape. A collection of brief and dreamy abstractions, this is an album of soft and comforting respite.

The aforementioned childish virtue is most notable on the twinkling synths that lead tracks like ‘December, January’, ‘Rosemary’ and ‘Celestial Charts’, which call to mind the similarly minimal and naive wonder of Disasterpiece’s soundtrack for indie videogame FEZ. Occasional strands of warm piano add a soft, human element to some of the tracks, with opener ‘After a Swim’ taking on something of a Sigur Rós vibe when the melody joins the softly radiating ambience.

The longer title track is the most spacious affair. Dropping a small melodic idea into a vast, cooling pool of atmospheric sound, Isik Kural invites us to sit and listen to the ripples come back to us again and again in a gently hypnotic and meditative fashion.

Maya’s Night certainly doesn’t break any moulds for ambient or experimental music, but it sits perfectly amongst the light and heartening side of the genre, and it may well be just the tonic you need.