Release Date: 22 November 2024
Song Count: 13
Duration: 53 minutes, 16 seconds
Rating: 5.5/10
Description:
Song Count: 13
Duration: 53 minutes, 16 seconds
Rating: 5.5/10
Description:
From Virginia Beach in the titular state emerges an electronic producer by the name of Andrew Horton, known to the world as Young Hierophant, with his final album and self-designated magnum opus Return to the Healing Church. An ambient work that uses synths and the scape of digital sounds to its fullest to create an immersive atmosphere, the album promises a unique listening experience created from complex and challenging means of making the music featured within it.
The LP has a pseudo-concept album feel to it by telling the story of a paladin on an adventure through the depths of hell across all Young Hierophant's works, with these few tracks acting as the ultimate conclusion - however, directly listening through these tracks, that vague vision does not seem to be necessarily obvious, and the whole package has more of a sensed progression of a standard ambient album than anything with a set narrative. Synths, keys, chiptune-like beats in songs like "We March Under The Gladiolus Flag!", sawtooth sounds and plenty of other elements are used to put together an experience that feels like a mixture between a prominent instrumental album demanding for the listener's attention and an atmospheric one dwelling on its idleness. It is clear that the project strives to be something larger; that wish, though, is at best washed out here, making it unclear to a listener who goes in without prior context that there even is anything to it beyond merely some ambient tracks.
While the music provided in Return to the Healing Church is pleasant and soothing enough, it ultimately comes across as unsure of its motive as it finds itself stuck between the lack of musical memorability akin to ambient genres and the foundations of an untold narrative that fails to truly solidify. In that sense, with the exception of certain standout tracks like "Stepping Blade", the record has a difficult time offering anything of note as a result, as the unique ideas subtly thrown around rarely stick their landing cleanly enough. This is a shame, given the potential Young Hierophant showcases in parts of these tracks and the fact that the album has been marked as the stage name's "swan song", bearing great importance to the producer's discography as a whole. Perhaps Horton can find a different path to expanding on his crafts from this point out and provide the best parts of his music to the world at some point - but that point seems to not quite be here.