Sign Libra - Sea to Sea (2020)

Sign Libra deftly refreshes new age tropes in a beautifully breezy LP of ambient-dance-pop certain to charm lovers of records by early Grimes, Kate Bush, YMO, Ana Roxanne, Maria Minerva.

Conceived by Latvia’s Agata Melnikova, Sign Libra has quietly impressed in recent years via Antinote’s vinyl issue of her debut ‘Closer to the Equator’ (2018), and a spot on the ‘New Atlantis Vol.1’ comp collated by India Jordan and Deadboy’s label. Now she is set for much wider recognition with ‘Sea To Sea’, a gloriously widescreen suite of ohrwurming melodic motifs and diaphanous vocal harmonies helmed in gauzy, distant dance rhythms to the sweetest, light-headed effect.

Inspired by lunar movements and the link between the cerebral and the celestial - but never really taken too heavily - the album’s nine songs tesselate the same elements in myriad ways. Like twists of a kaleidoscope pointed at the moon, her songs wax and wane between visions of the moon seen by day and in its nocturnal phases, variously turning from full-moon giddiness to peacefully arcing crescents and half-lidded, gibbous hypnagogia.

Where the cloying cliches of too many new age operators detract form their meditative appeal, Sign Libra’s grasp of ethereal and lilting, popwise touches strike the right balance of playfulness and sincerity for us, and we reckon songs such as ‘Sea of Waves’ and the possessed invocation of ‘Sea of Serenity’ will be haunting us for time to come.