Ingaja – Reverie (2020)
Ingaja got us hooked to her deep and dark sound with ‘Quietness in the Air’ and enveloped us further with ‘Blink of an Eye’. Now she has released her debut album Reverie which includes these two singles and seven other sad indie tracks. Throughout the album, she continues to blend ambient soundscapes with her reflective lyrics.
Each track on the album offers a step on the journey to inner freedom. Through her soundscape, you are encouraged to escape reality for a while and discover a deeper knowing of yourself and the world. As you listen to the album, you are drawn into a dreamy state where you can get pleasantly lost while discovering more about everything around you.
The album starts with ‘Escapism’ which gently draws you into the dreamy soundscape of the album. The ambient pulsing of the opening has you slipping out of reality and into the world of Ingaja. It is a wonderful opening track for the album that sets you on the path of inner freedom. This is a purely instrumental track that has a meditative vibe to it and could really be listened to whenever you feel the need to decompress.
‘Quietness in the Air’ continues the soft tones of the opening track and introduces you to Ingaja’s vocals. Her voice intertwines with the layers of the melody to have you floating away on the mists of the soundscape. This track has you yearning for the light fog of the forests as you walk through their stillness. There is a longing threaded into each note and word, but the easiness continues the meditative vibes set up by the first track.
Ingaja’s vocals lightly touch you from the start of ‘No Time to Waste’. There is a darker feeling to this song as it brings different melodic elements into play. The acoustic guitar adds a new dimension to the sound as it grounds you. Instead of the soft floating feeling of the last tracks, this one has a sense of reality to it threaded into the notes. The swelling moments add to the darkness of the track while the vocals have you thinking about things.
‘Rivers’ takes you back to the dreamscape, but instead of the floating mists, you are gently led to a more solid landscape. The melody combines the ambience of the opening tracks with the grounding of ‘No Time to Waste’. This leaves the music to swirl around you like a light mist, but your feet are kept firmly on the ground. The strings add to the depth of the melody while the vocals lead you further and further into the messaging.
The opening line of ‘Dreams are Taking Off’ has an almost folk vibe to it and grabs your attention. This leads you perfectly into the vocals that you can’t stop listening to. There is an interesting flow to this song when compared with the rest of the album. The driving beats grab at you while the vocals are a dark wisp of smoke flowing past you.
The next track is ‘Blink of an Eye’ which takes a more internal turn. The melody has a sense of emptiness like you are in a vast landscape with no end in sight. This combines with the vocals that take a dark turn as you are directed to look internally. There are soft waves to the melody that help you rest in the dreamy state of the album, but there is something searching within the song.
‘Yesterday Was Hard’ has this swelling opening with an acoustic guitar line that effortlessly draws you to the vocals. There is a questioning in this song that makes you think about what you should do in the future. This track continues the introspection of the last, but with a slight twist. Instead of searching within yourself for peace, you are encouraged to consider how to move forward. The slow pace of the track with the wooden notes filtering from the depths help you get into the vibe.
‘Down’ throws you into an expansive melody from the first moments. The vast emptiness is back for this track as you feel you are in an echo chamber. There is a sadness to this song that is highlighted by the vocals and lyrics. However, through this sadness, there is a glimmer of hope as you are encouraged to consider where you go now. This tackles the question in a different way to the last track as you are shown that you have to go down before getting up. There is a haunting feeling to the vocals on this track.
The album ends with ‘Full Moon’ which continues the darker tones. However, there is something very different about this track as there is more spoken poetry to the lyrics and vocals. There is an almost psychedelic vibe to the song but this works really well in easing you out of the album’s soundscape. Through the lyrics, you are slowly brought back to reality with a sense of realisation after an internal search.
Ingaja takes you on a journey to inner freedom through the sounds of her album Reverie. After gently drawing you into a dreamy soundscape, she turns your attention inward and helps you discover a deeper understanding of yourself.
Find out more about Ingaja on her website, Facebook, Instagram and Spotify.
