Mitseliy - The Lost

 

Released: July 10

The Lost is an album that is, by its very nature, pervasively haunting. Conceptually, it plays on the idea of persistent memories as they are ghosts of the past. This theme expounds itself beautifully throughout the album in true ghostly fashion. The pads are large, lush, and beautiful, sending the ethereal vibes out in all directions. Along with these wonderfully crafted pads, small echoes of voices can be heard throughout as well, used in all different manners but each one perfectly encapsulates the haunting aesthetic of memories in the ether. 

The album starts of with this use of vocal echoes with “She Pointed to the Sky” in the most upfront kind of way. The vocal is consistent, singing out an almost mournful little melody as the pads provide an accompanying piece that supports the faint and airy vocal, bolstering it into the forefront of the track. The track itself feels quite meditative in its own, going on for some time to lull the listener in gently. The next track, while still an ambient piece in itself, takes many more liberties than its preceding track. Rather than the softly sung vocal, it is filled with the indiscernible bit of speech of some long ago event as the birds chirp and the winds sweeps. It feels as though we have just been suddenly transported to the moments before a tragedy in its tone with wistful pads accompanying the sounds of the people involved. 

I personally quite enjoyed the ambiguity of the whole story. Nothing is really spelled out here, but there are enough pieces to suggest that these memories are of a tragic nature, considering the theme of The Lost returns multiple times including on “Nocturne for the Lost” and “Requiem for the Lost.” The latter of these two is a particularly intense finish to the album as the voice-like pads rise and fall with a certain fervor, almost as if it is trying to exorcise the deep emotional pain from itself. I felt this was a particularly poignant way to end things as it shows the variation of intensity in the mournful feelings associated with loss, especially as contrasted with some of the lighter but still emotionally weighted songs earlier in the album.