5 out of 5

Label: VHF Records

Produced by: Noel Summerville (mastered by)

And now, I think, the fullest realization of Daniel O’Sullivan’s library music project with KPM: The Psychic Garden adjusts from the magnificent and mesmerizing Fourth Density into an album that works both in a “true” library music sense – slight, accessible tunes; varying tempos and moods; putting it more in line with the first of this trilogy – and combines that with the atmospheric of Density. That previous release may function more as a thematic album, but that’s not suggestive of Garden being lesser – just a different approach, or perhaps it is as its title suggests: a garden of varying styles.

These are synced beautifully, going from light jazz to ambience, to more delicate affairs – the Western shuffle of Crawl Under Here; the haunted memory of Dusty Feather – then suddenly getting funky and shoegaze about things, cycling in more modern jazz and psychedelics closer to Aether fare with, like post-rock, or electro dashes. That sounds fragmented, except there’s a holistic approach that lays down an m.o. of patience, and an overall exploratory mood. So instead of sounding like the samples of Electric Maya, all of Psychic Garden’s tracks belong together, organically flowing from one track to the next, but wholly capable of being plucked – library style – for your soundtrack, in support of a particular mood.

The trilogy thus makes perfect sense, requiring the warm-up of the first entry and the more expansive second to get us here: a panoply of choices that don’t require any previous context, and yet are that much stronger with that context; the songs here are as deep or shallow as you need, making their points immediately, while offering rewards for those who give it the full runtime – you can pass by and appreciate this garden, or stop and give it some loving and due admiration.