CATE FRANCESCA BROOKS Vinyl & CDs

Review: Cate Brooks continues her elegant exploration of imagined geographies with a suite of glacial, slow-blooming compositions that feel suspended between reality and dream. Built primarily on Synclavier, Prophet and 808, these pieces evoke the hush and expanse of a far northern landscape with uncanny clarity—despite Brooks never having visited the region that inspired it. Tracks like ‘Like Breathing Statues’ and ‘Aspect from the Window’ suggest weather systems forming in slow motion, their textures layered and precise but never clinical. ‘In the Blue Hour’ moves with a quiet internal rhythm, almost ecclesiastical in tone, while ‘Polar Night’ closes the journey in dusk-lit stillness. There’s something deeply solitary about the whole record—each sound shaped and weighted, but never forced. Brooks's background in synthesis lends a tactile, handmade feel to every element, creating something less like a travelogue and more like a lucid dream of place.