I’m at a 5. I mean, listen; if we’re weighing 5’s next to each other, this is at the low end of the 5’s I’ve given. It’s not doing anything so deeply impressive to actually put it up next to, say, Nevermind by Nirvana or Rumours by Fleetwood Mac. It’s a 5 on its own merits, for its genre, and for my experience with it. I just really fucking enjoyed this. Yes, one may disparage this as “beep boop music”, but I think it’s more than that – maybe it’s just because I’m a big sci-fi head, but I haven’t really heard an electronica soundscape so deeply capture the feeling of adventure, mystery, and ambience in this specific style so efficiently and effectively. I’m not saying this is easy to make, but it does a lot without really using up too much; a lot of what’s here is based in simple windy synths, panning tricks, volume tricks to add the illusion of depth, and the occasional Moog melody distorted to hell and back. It’s a really fast 37 minutes, despite how slow it felt in the moment. I walked around while listening to this album, and even my walking just felt more deliberate, more focused; it could’ve been because of how attentive I was to the soundscape, but I’d like to imagine it’s because it just felt more like space to me, with that sense of adventure really getting into my brain and actively working. It’s an album that’s deeply, deeply enhanced with headphones in, and it’s enhanced even further if you close your eyes – it’s an audio journey, and for me, about as effective as an ASMR video might be in terms of eliciting a specific feeling. Hell, ASMR just barely works for me, but this really fucking worked for me, so it might be even better for someone else. I thought it was a beautifully crafted set of compositions, and I can feel this album’s general influence on so much of modern ambient music. Not quite to the degree of, say, an Eno album, but something relatively close. It’s an enjoyable 5 if you let yourself melt into the soundscape – it’s certainly no less than a 3, at the very worst.