Orange Clearing

On her second full length album, 2024’s Orange Clearing, Washington-based artist Domenica Diavoleria practices her own brand of murmuring textures and suggestive collages referencing distant memories – if it’s something a UK artist might term hauntology, in Diavoleria’s hands it becomes something simultaneously mysterious and just a bit winsome around the corners, as the blend of darker and lighter sounds on “Friendship Chain” helps make clear early on. Per the liner notes the album, consisting solely of instrumentals, is partially derived from her childhood memories of Seattle; if those themes are more implicit for a general listener by default, the sense of flowing dreaminess across each of the pieces, created from subtle fragments and elements that sometimes loop and sometimes simply drift in and out if not go on their own exploratory paths. From the opening “Whirligig” it’s all a quietly compelling trip, and songs like the shimmering sparkle of “The Locked Room,” “Fun Forest” with its subtly gripping conclusion and the mesmerizing “Remnant King In Repose” are all striking examples of Diavoleria’s art.