Bandcamp Seven tracks, fifty one minutes, and two of them are under three and a half. Everything else here runs between seven and ten and a half, so the shape of the record is five long pieces with two short ones wedged into positions three and six. Those two short pieces are where the album decides what it is.
Cløudy Skies are a duo from the outskirts of Paris, Lionel Forest on vocals, bass and synths and Nicolas Simon on guitar and synths, and this is their second album for Argonauta after Changes in 2023. Forest produced it. Conny Pettersson plays the drums, Chris Richard of Nature Morte and Keijo Niinimaa of Rotten Sound both appear as guest vocalists, Richard on the title track.
The three minutes that reframe everything
“Living Inside A Dream” sits at track three and runs three minutes thirteen. It is the quietest piece on the album and by a long way the darkest: under three percent of its energy lands above 5 kHz, where every other track on the record puts between twenty three and twenty seven percent. Its spectral centre is 1153 Hz against roughly 2800 for its neighbours.
Numbers that far apart usually mean a mistake. Here they mean a decision. The track is a deliberate hole in the middle of a bright, wide, high-shimmer record, and dropping it at position three rather than saving it for later is the smartest thing on the album. Everything after it is heard against that gap. “Birdsong” at position six does the same job more gently and is brighter for it.
The single works differently than it is sold
“Depth Spell” is the ten and a half minute lead single and the press describes it as a gradual, immersive progression. It is also, by measurement, the tightest track on the record: seven decibels between its quiet and its loud passages, where the opener “Fluffy Darkness” moves through nearly twenty four.
That is not a flaw, it is a different method. “Fluffy Darkness” wins by contrast and “Depth Spell” wins by accumulation, holding one level for ten minutes and letting the layers do the work that dynamics usually do. The second is the harder trick and the band pull it off. It does mean the album gives you its biggest swing in the first eight minutes and never returns to it, which is worth knowing before you start.
Where it leaves me
Recommended, and it is the kind of record that rewards the full sitting rather than a sampling. Fifty one minutes, two writers who clearly agree on what they want, a drummer brought in from outside who anchors it without showing off, and guests used sparingly enough that you notice them. The title track is the brightest thing here and earns its ten minutes.
The reservation is the back half. After “Lights Of The Night” and the title track, both past nine minutes, “A Room For Dreams” has to close an album that has already made its biggest statements twice. It is good, and it is working uphill. Start with “Fluffy Darkness”, then skip to “Living Inside A Dream” to hear what the record is built around.
One track breaks every pattern on this album. “Living Inside A Dream” puts under three percent of its energy above 5 kHz and centres at 1153 Hz, where the other six sit between 2453 and 2955 Hz with twenty three to twenty seven percent up top. It is also the quietest by average level, roughly four decibels below the album’s loudest track.
Range varies widely by design. The opener moves through almost twenty four decibels between its quiet and loud passages, the closer through seventeen and a half, and the two ten minute pieces through seven and twelve. Nothing is flattened: peaks hold between twelve and a half and fourteen and a half decibels above the average on every track.
The rest of the record is consistently bright, which makes the one dark track read as a deliberate drop rather than an accident of sequencing.
Standout tracks: Living Inside A Dream, Bury Me Beneath The Stars, Fluffy Darkness
