Euan Dalgarno - Cliff Workshop

 Released: May 15

Euan Dalgarno’s latest album was created in early 2025 during which time he was recovering from an accident. This may sound like an ancillary factor but sonically this time seems to have played an important  role in what we are presented with now. The atmosphere is overall quite ghostly, evoking blank-ish scenes of neutral colors with an unusual brightness about them. It feels much like the aural equivalent of walking down a bright hospital corridor. There’s a certain listlessness to many of the pieces, which contrasts beautifully the more dynamic piece on the album such as “The Bealach.” This track keeps that same atmosphere but replaces the spacious and blank pads with a small piano melody that is recessed in the overall stereo field, but keeps an unusually poignant presence at the same time. Perhaps this is the sound of hope and moving forward?

“Ghostdust” makes certain cues towards more dynamic nature of the album, featuring a recurring motif of the thin synth that skates around in granular fashion on top of the more subtle pads. It’s a track that really exemplifies those drone-like yet still lively textures that give everything that misty and ethereal feel. “Cliff Workshop” follows suit later on, though this one is far more blurry in its tone with a much less defined centerpiece, instead feeling much like wandering in a snow-covered landscape as it still gently falls around you. 

Cliff Workshop is an album that manages to carry an emotional weight with grace and balance. There is nothing mopey or saccharine about it, but rather it is a perfect balance of presenting the emotional toil of recovery without indulging itself to deeply in morose or existential meanderings. It carries of tone of resignation that channels itself into a sense of hope for that recovery, that things can still be better but only once the path of recovering has been accepted and embraced.