Julianna Barwick hinted at greatness with Florine, her EP from a couple of years back, but 2011 was the year she fully capitalised on her potential, constructing a cohesive statement that holds up as a landmark in ambient music's rich and varied history. From the outset The Magic Place treads a lonely, individualistic path, as Barwick continues to explore the power and beauty of the human voice, looping her etherial vocals to create a series of enchanting, otherworldly soundscapes. As an LA Times article testified earlier in the year, new age influences - for some time wrongly considered close cousins of the clichéd whale noises that soundtracked '80s health spas and meditation sessions - have been re-contextualised with considerable success of late. Whether identified in the alien drones of Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never or in the hazy house of Teengirl Fantasy, these traditionally unfashionable sources have somehow become fashionable again. Alongside the aforementioned artists, Barwick demonstrates why swathes of this oft-neglected genre have proven ripe for renewal.
Rather than shying from her music's escapist, therapeutic qualities - descriptors that were initially associated with new age's limited emotional heft - The Magic Place firmly embraces them, achieving dazzling heights by surrounding the listener with a tapestry of fluttering notes that drift by on languid, comfortable rhythmic pacing. On the appropriately titled 'Envelop', an oddly familiar, layered backdrop acts as a blank slate for gentle experimentation, with Barwick entwining both low and high notes around the same melodic centre point, an exercise that's both arresting and, as a result of slight (one would assume intentional) tuning imperfections, oddly unsettling. Similar success is achieved with 'The Magic Place' and 'Bob In Your Gait', songs on which Barwick pushes her rich textures to the point of saturation, an effect that despite overwhelming the mix injects unbridled passion into her swirling compositions. Against conventional wisdom, the record regularly flirts with transcendence precisely because it grows gradually, soothing and eventually dominating the senses in a way that remains under wraps until each composition reaches patient revelation.
An arguable shortcoming of Barwick's previous output lay in its homogenous nature, but here she embraces variety, the first half of the record presenting a series of consecutive and quite separate ideas which are pushed determinedly to their logical peaks. Tinkling piano, carefully unobtrusive baselines and muffled rhythms prop up the intricate arrangements encountered throughout, building satisfying hooks from otherwise tepid ingredients. On 'Keep Up The Good Work', a song that represents her greatest artistic success to date, Barwick allows a steady, warm heartbeat to punctuate her elastic vocals, which are bent and skewed to achieve a haunting, distant quality. 'Prizewinning', a late high point, introduces a rattling snare to her established template, which both breaks up the flow nicely and ushers the song onwards towards its grand climax. Barwick's expressive voice is what gives the record its identity, and in much the same way that Liz Fraser spun a rich sonic web with her vocal acrobatics in the Cocteau Twins, she places greater emphasis on sound than she does meaning. In fact, the record revels in its distant aura. Each song hollows out a cavernous, alien dimension and happily inhabits it, in doing so encapsulating the mystical appeal that forces The Magic Place above the year's considerable competition.