As signaled by the name of his project and this album, Eli Murray’s Gentleforce is an immersive, repetition-minded experience that feels a lot like meditation. Working with reverberating electronics and an understated collection of instruments, Murray recorded Gentleforce’s full-length debut both indoors and outdoors. There are ticklish found sounds and distant percussive devices, trickling melodies and subterranean throbs of bass. While creating this expansive world, though, the craftsman-like Sydneysider steps back from it as needed. Instead of micromanaging every detail, he seems to devise a few key elements, set them afloat in open space, and see where they end up.

‘Learning To Forgive’ initiates us with glints of synths and gently clapping percussion, while ‘Oh The Mystery, Oh The Wonder’ couches its melodies in similar pulse-slowing washes. Murray pursues an almost New Age set of vague sighs on ‘Lift Up Your Weary Head’, sounding part like whale music and part like religious chant. The track opens with field recordings of children playing that Murray sourced from the Free Sound Project database. Much less present is ‘Ode To Moritz’ – a nod to techno pioneer Moritz von Oswald – which crackles and searches for form until it dissolves around the nine-minute mark and begins anew. A remix of ‘Painting Red Things Grey’ by the Sydney band Underlapper, re-titled ‘New Dawn’, is a bit more layered and active than the other tracks, though still with a translucent vibe.

Maybe the most perfectly realised creation here, ‘The Desert Song’, is pristine, minimal and ultra-chill, with subtle melodies and a gentle push ever forward. On the shorter side, ‘Our Last Day Together’ mines a series of creepy whirls, field recordings of birds, morphing low-impact percussion and melodica from guest Lauren Rolfe, who also plays guitar on closer ‘Majestic (We Will Never End)’. Bringing the album to a spectral finish, it opens with a whispered conversation that’s likely to startle anyone who has drifted off in their own thoughts.

Sacred Spaces is the ninth in the POWWOW series of new music curated by artist-run Sydney label Feral Media. It’s an accessible, lovingly packaged introduction to POWWOW, as well as a hypnotic showcase for Gentleforce. Utilising a rare gift for restraint, Murray quickly gets under our skin, finds unlikely homes for his gorgeous melodies, and manages to make us feel like we’re exploring right alongside him.

by Doug Wallen