There is a specific texture to darkness near the sea, a kind of humid weight that Jánnos Eolou captures with startling precision in “Night Beyond”. Listening to this album is like walking through a house you lived in twenty years ago: the floorboards creak in familiar places, but the furniture has been rearranged just enough to make you question your own memory.
Eolou, a veteran composer with a cinematic pedigree including Solino, brings his command of the orchestra here, but it’s the inclusion of Görkem Devrim Ökten on the Qanun that acts as the narrative thread. In “Unwatched Stars,” the acoustic textures don’t just sit there; they percolate. It starts melancholic a solitary figure on a balcony but shifts into something with teeth, a driving rhythmic pulse that reminds me of the sensation of running late for a train you secretly hope to miss. It feels distinctly “widescreen,” yet oddly private.
There is a moment in “Breakwater” where the fusion of Western orchestration and the almost crystalline logic of the Chinese melodic influence makes the air in the room feel thinner. It evokes the image of a koi pond viewed through frosted glass. The piano arpeggios ripple outward, mimicking water so effectively I found myself checking the window for rain. Speaking of rain, “Unwritten Letter” literally incorporates the sound of it alongside distant city mechanics. It’s a bold choice that anchors the high-register friction of the strings to something grimy and real, creating a waltz for ghosts navigating a wet pavement.
The album explores the “Mediterranean Night,” but this isn’t a tourist brochure. In “Your Breath,” the brass vibrates with a mournful wobble, a heavy saudade that feels like finding a theater ticket stub in a coat you haven’t worn since winter. It is elegant, certainly, but it hurts a little. The Quarto Quartet & Deyan Velikov provide a string backdrop that swells like a chest taking in a sharp intake of breath.
Then there is “After You Left.” If the earlier tracks were the contemplation, this is the panic. It channels a “Dark Academia” aesthetic sophisticated but frantic. It sounds like the realization that you’ve lost the plot of the novel you’re writing. The bowing is frantic, breathless, layering anxiety over beauty in a way that feels dangerously inevitable.
Eolou has constructed a nocturnal philosophy here. It is music that treats the night not as an absence of light, but as a heavy, protective veil where time stops behaving linearly. “Night Beyond” suggests that the past and future are just sitting together at a table in the dark, waiting for you to pour the wine. Are you brave enough to join them?
