Words by David C. Obenour
The connection between nature and music runs deep in our psyche. Our first muse, the natural sounds of all that surround us inspire efforts for our own creation. A gentle dawn breaking through the clouds. A rainstorm as heard from the forest’s floor. A field in the middle of day, alive with all that inhabit it. Just by reading these words, subtle melodies can begin to form in your mind.
On Reverie, these grounds are deftly explored by post-rock cellist, Rebecca Foon (Silver Mt. Zion) and classically-trained violinist, Aliayta Foon-Dancoes. Sisters, the two further delve into their landscape with sparse piano, along with contributed electronic flourishes from producer Jace Lasek (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Besnard Lakes). The results are haunting and beautiful. Elegant and olden.
Off Shelf: Relocating back to the Northeast, you’ve been playing together now for a few years now. Can you describe how the collaboration has gone so far? How it has evolved since the beginning?
Aliayta Foon-Dancoes: When we first went into the studio together, my main experience in that setting had been session work in a classical orchestral context. I had no idea how different this experience would be. Reverie became a process of unlearning for me: embracing imperfection as a creative tool, learning to trust intuition, and approaching things laterally rather than vertically.
Our collaboration represents a meeting of musical fluencies, while our literacy and training exist in different spheres. That’s the most exciting and rewarding part for me — I’m drawn to creative spaces where my ways of making are met by a different approach. That’s how I continue to grow artistically: by having my voice and methods challenged and stretched by amazing makers whose practices are distinct from mine. Being creatively fueled in that space is essential to my practice — and it’s even more special because I get to share it with my sister through this project.
OS: What do you appreciate about what Rebecca brings to the collaboration?
AFD: My sister brings an ease and playfulness, an openness to new processes, and a confidence in asking me to try things. She has a clear sense of my skill set — the kinds of virtuosity that come naturally to me on my instrument — and can draw musical gestures out without my even realizing it leaving me genuinely surprised by the result! On the album we’re currently working on, an entire piece was built from a series of prompts she gave me, which ended up forming the framework for a complete track.
OS: Recorded primarily on cello and violin with piano accompaniment, Reverie also makes use of small electronic flourishes. Can you talk about their inclusion? How they were first conceived and considered and what you enjoy about them in the final recording?
AFD: These are some of my favorite parts of the album! Some of the effects were conceived and added in post, while others were used to build the tracks themselves. Jace Lasek played a huge role in shaping the electronic elements and was an invaluable creative force in the making of this record.
Dream of What Was is a great example of one of the more subversive uses of electronics on the album and shows the crucial role Jace played. For that track, he sent me an automated delay and reverb that were dramatically shifting as I improvised over them for four minutes. It was almost like having an automated click track — but far more creatively stimulating — and it led to the violin line that stretches across the entire piece. You can hear moments where I really accelerate and pull back — those were the result of me responding to the automations Jace was sending in my ears, even though that shifting effect isn’t present in the final track itself.
I’ve been asked what preparations we used on the instruments — and I think that question highlights part of what I love so much about the electronics we used. They almost sound like tinfoil under my fingerboard or blu tack on the piano strings — subtle, physical interventions — Jace helped us find sounds that felt organic while adding that extra bit we couldn’t achieve acoustically.
OS: The songs carry solemnity, stillness, reverence, and sometimes a sadness to them. Understanding the political and literal climate of the world when they were recorded – how did you feel creating and capturing these songs helped you process your emotions?
AFD: My experience listening to this album now is very different from the experience of making it. We recorded it in the Laurentians during winter. I remember looking out the studio windows at our surroundings — so still and quiet. I think you can hear that environment in the album: the icy texture of stacked vertical harmonies, the repetition evoking a landscape obscured by snow, and the cold beauty of the high registers.
Now, the solemnity and sadness you’ve mentioned take on a different meaning given the current political climate. That’s one of the amazing things about the inherently abstract nature of music — it allows us to process what we need over time, and its meaning continues to evolve as time passes. Those emotions have changed, I felt much more optimism when we made this album. I still hear some of that optimism, but now I feel the repetition and accumulation of musical motives as echoes of the ongoing effects of sustained imbalance and harm.
OS: Can you explain the impact of repeating a motive within an instrumental album? How you picked the throughlines for the album and the feelings you hoped to spotlight through this repeated composition?
AFD: Repetition and cyclical composition hold a deep emotional weight—they allow a musical idea to evolve while remaining recognizable, giving the listener a sense of continuity and connection. On this album, repetition is never exact; every return is changed in some way. The orchestration, production, instrumentation, register, and timbre are all subtly or significantly altered. And even if a motive returns identically, the listener is different—they’ve just heard something new, and that fresh context reshapes the way the repeated material is perceived. In this way, repetition becomes less about sameness and more about transformation and reflection.
For me, this compositional approach offers a form of catharsis. Hearing something familiar return can feel grounding—it creates a sense of place, a moment to pause and reflect, to settle into something known amid change. It’s like building a relationship with the album’s world; instead of needing twenty listens to feel at home, the structure itself gently guides the listener toward familiarity and trust from the first playthrough.
I think this way of writing feels especially necessary right now. We need music that invites stillness, reflection, and a quiet kind of restoration—not as an escape, but as a means to recalibrate and reconnect with ourselves. This music holds space for contemplation, centering, release, and catharsis—a rare and essential offering in a world that often pulls us away from those inner states.
OS: Can you talk about your relationship to nature? How does and doesn’t it connect with your relationship to music?
Rebecca Foon: Nature has always been both a sanctuary and a mirror — a place where I return to listen more deeply. The textures, patterns, and silences in nature feel very close to the language of music for me. There’s a stillness in a forest that contains a magic that helps me connect to a portal of creative ideas.
At the same time, nature doesn’t demand narrative. It resists the tidy arc. And in that way, it also challenges my musical instincts. I’ve learned from it how to dwell in unresolved moments, in sustained tones and gentle dissonance. With Reverie, Aliayta and I weren’t trying to describe nature so much as embody its presence — its quiet urgency.
OS: As an activist, what role do you feel music most effectively serves in instigating for change or awareness? Has the role or power shifted over time? In any way worse? Any way better?
RF: Music opens the heart — and that is no small act. In a time when we are bombarded by distraction, music still has this elemental power to make someone pause, feel emotion, and remember our interconnectedness so something beyond ourselves. That pause can lead to transformation and build movements.
I don’t know that music has less power now, but the context around it has shifted. It’s more saturated, more algorithmic, and often more commodified. That said, the countercurrent — intimate recordings, live performances, and creative spaces to share — is also growing. There’s still an appetite for sincerity, and music can carve out those sacred spaces for collective attention and action.
OS: Can you talk about the photographs in the album art? What spoke to you about the images you did choose, how you thought about them in placement and layout?
RF: The photographs emerged from the same meditative space as the music. They were taken in Kyoto, Japan — in early morning light and in the in-between stillness where time feels suspended. They felt like visual echoes of the compositions we were writing: quiet, searching, ethereal.
The layout was deliberately spacious — we wanted each image to breathe, to invite contemplation rather than dictate meaning. There’s a softness to the light and landscape that mirrors the fragility of the melodies. The images don’t explain the music, and the music doesn’t explain the images — they coexist, gently in dialogue.
OS: Your music here is also very cinematic in feel, which makes me want to question – if you could give action and narrative to the images, provide context for what’s happening in and around them – what additional story would you hope to share?
RF: If there’s a story here, it’s one of returning. A figure walking slowly through a half-remembered landscape. Listening for something not yet named. There’s no climax, no resolution — just the slow revealing of memory surfacing and dissolving again. The narrative is cyclical: a reverie that loops. It might begin in longing, move through grief or awe, and settle into presence. The music and images are both gestures of noticing — of looking closely at the world, and also at the self within that world. If I had to name the story, it would be one of soft resilience — a quiet remembering of what connects us.