Heroarky - Healing Process

 

Released: March 28

Healing Process is an album that manages to be hopeful, beautiful, and serene while maintaining this background sense of unease to it as well. It’s an extremely well executed technique that has as much to do with Heroarky’s skill as it does with his experience. The entire album is a reflection of his time when he was battling cancer, eventually managing to make a full recovery. But he tells his story over the course of seven tracks of varying complexity and subtlety in a calming, captivating, and contemplative manner. 

The album opens with “Pulse of Life,” a forlorn yet optimistic sounding piece featuring beautiful swelling synths and the quiet but distinctive sound of a human heartbeat. It serves the purpose of setting the scene so well as we embark on this reflective journey of one f the greatest struggles an individual can go through. Much of the rest of the album follows the same motifs established here, including the use of some superior field recordings and the gentlest of synth pads. “Serene Call” breaks with this in some manner, opting to utilize more soft tonal percussion rather than sweeping pads, but the processing on this mallet-like motif is frankly superb in the manner that it inverts, reverses, slightly glitches, and generally fluctuates throughout the track. It stands out of the only track that features this kind of sound design and feels like the first moment in which the album displays a true sense of optimism. 

The album concludes with the two longest pieces, “Regenerate” and “Sunrise to Sunset,” both of which return us to that mood of solemn reflection. This is especially true of the former as it meanders with us through the soft sounds of waves lapping on the shore as contemplative piano notes rings softly through the atmosphere. But I really don’t think there could have been a better choice for the last track than the latter. It feels so sparse in its tonality, relying heavily on the lightly manipulated field recordings that feel so very slice of life. There are the morning and night sounds of nature such as the birds chirping and toad croaking, but there are also some real human moments such as the sounds of a lightly bustling cafe or market. It perfectly captures the sense of a newfound appreciation for life through these short sonic vignettes that are wonderfully unified by simple tonal elements. A beautifully bittersweet ending indeed.