Originally released in 2018, Ambient Works I perfectly distills the talents of Oslo electronic producer Yokii (Joakim Skurk) into epic, ambient drone music. Releasing an ambient collection as a numbered volume intrepidly invites comparisons to Aphex Twin and Brian Eno, though the formality of such a title leaves Yokii’s music to truly speak for itself; he’s largely tasking the listener with interpreting the EP’s narrative and leitmotifs.

The artwork - a filtered photograph taken from an airplane - offers the first clue to the Yokii’s mindset, depicting a monochrome Norwegian landscape, the contours of mountains, valleys and lakes. It’s tempting describe the five 5-9 minute soundscapes as ‘cinematic’. Not simply because they are atmospheric, instrumentals, but because they truly immerse the listener in vast, glacial environments and immense moods, and suggest epochal moments in time.

The opening track, ‘Crepuscular Man’, depicts an individual who is active in the twilight period, perhaps an early bird, insomniac, or all-night reveller. This implies that the EP’s narrative is beginning at the very start of the day, a period that painters poignantly refer to as the blue hour, a transition between two worlds. Distorted synths swell in magmatic waves, and it’s as if you can feel the world turning, the rise and fall of the sun and the tide; it’s not hard to envision stratus clouds stretching across the skyline, while distorted notes of guitar twinkle like breaking daylight.

By comparison, ‘Mind Up’ feels like a further awakening, pairing synths recalling Vangelis’s Blade Runner score with a haunting soft piano motif that brings to mind Jóhann Jóhannsson’s work. Fluttering arpeggios take the piece into celestial territory, before a pulsing kick gently fades in around the five minute mark, before the piece dissipates into spectral reverb and delay.

The titles of the next three pieces signpost the EP’s shift towards a darker tone, alluding to stress, grief and death. ‘Breaking Strain’ introduces malaise and tension, hinting at some unknown crisis, perhaps personal, environmental, or both. This is the essence of Ambient Works I, where person and place feel intrinsically linked, like the overwhelming spiritual feeling of exploring a beautiful or barren landscape.

The sorrowful lament of ‘Mind Angst’ heightens the anxiety, with a repetition of two melancholic piano chords that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Radiohead song, before this gives way to foreboding, bleak walls of distortion, before the piece comes full circle. It feels like a grief-stricken elegy, alternating a feeling of a tragic loss with a sense of impending doom.

Closing piece ‘Nothing But Bones’ initially feels like a soul rising to the heavens, not unlike the vertical swirls in the artwork that seem to evaporate from the landscape. It recalls the folk saying, that collective shards of light rising to the clouds in the distance represent souls departing for the aether. The piece densifies and combusts in the second half, like a cremation turning a body to ash, before it ends with a gloomy rumble that could easily score a David Lynch dream sequence, and it’s possible to deduce that the EP is coming to the end of a phase, from twilight to the night’s darkest hour.

It’s as if, with this monumental EP, Yokii is drawing parallels between the cycle of day and night, the human life cycle, and stages of emotion in response to something life-changing. Hopefully we’ll get to experience his Ambient Works II.