Floating White Abyss nestles comfortably in the place between long-form ambient and spacemusic. In this place there is a lot of familiarity, but through the three tracks here Darren Rogers provides a consistently soft and calming sensibility that works around the idea that you’ve heard this before. To some degree the music is constructed simply; Rogers’ layering is not deep, but each element that goes in has a soulful feel. Overall, the album is full of genuine emotion. There are points where I feel it starts to fall a little too much into the play chord/hold chord mode, but then Rogers will hit a swell of pure beauty, and it’s like a reminder of why I started to enjoy this music in the first place. Still, when “Floating” goes through a stretch with scale-ascending tones repeating over choral pads, it runs the risk of tipping the cliché balance toward the unfavorable. But it goes away and the track gives itself over to a classic spacemusic feel—you know the one, where we’ve cut the engines and are just drifting in the vast, shiny void—and all I want to do is listen to it. “White” is built on whisper-quiet textures and a droning hiss of wind. Of the three, this is perhaps the most meditative. Rogers indulges in the occasional burst of angelic voices, but otherwise keeps this one on the down-low. “Abyss” opens with title-contradicting chime tones that ring brightly. It eventually finds its way into a slightly darker place that draws on an approachable dissonance, but largely remains warm and welcoming.

As by-the-book as Floating White Abyss tends to be, it is deep and quiet enough to have merited a number of long looping sessions. I find myself often aware that I might prefer more density to the sound, but there is something about the weight of emotion here that lets me work through it. This one will resonate more with listeners whose tastes run to the Demby/Serrie side of things, that off-to-space-we-go sensibility. Definitely worth a listen.

Available from the Imagineer Records Bandcamp site.