Florist’s Emily A. Sprague adds her voice to modular synths on ‘Cyano’, a 14-track ambient album about an imagined planet. Our review
Ambient music is often sold as a place to disappear into. Emily A. Sprague‘s records have always felt more like places to be found. On ‘Cyano’, her fifth solo studio album, released Oct. 2 via RVNG Intl., the Florist leader builds an entire imagined planet out of modular synthesizers and, for the first time in her solo work, her own voice. It is a small, strange, quietly brave record about learning to feel again, and it mostly earns the size of its ambition.
The premise is generous and a little sad. Cyano is a planet Sprague invented, a place whose inhabitants are rebuilding capacities for expression and emotional connection that were once forbidden to them. Long empty of humans, it has been described as a planet “destroyed by misunderstanding,” and empathy sits at the centre of the project. The visual language of cyanotypes, those ghostly blue sun prints, hangs over it too, and the music shares their quality of images slowly surfacing from light.
No Samples, No Strings
Sprague set herself strict rules. Every sound on the album’s 14 tracks is synthesized, with no samples and no acoustic instruments, and the label frames the result as deliberately raw and minimal, a crackling signal sent from somewhere very distant. The constraint works in her favour. Rather than reaching for lush orchestral pads, she builds pieces from small, patient gestures. On ‘Rising‘, glitchy abstraction gives way to something more fluid, a reminder that modular synthesis can sound organic in the right hands.
It also clarifies where ‘Cyano’ sits in her catalogue. For years, Sprague’s solo ambient work has stood apart from the intimate, word-driven folk she writes with Florist, two practices running in parallel. This album is the first real attempt to let them meet.
A Voice From Very Far Away
That meeting point is her voice. Opener ‘Double Moon’ introduced it gently, Sprague singing softly over one of her drifting soundscapes, and ‘Sing To’ pushes further, laying whispered, emotive vocals over a minimal, twinkling hum. The singing rarely dominates. It hovers inside the mix like another oscillator, which suits a record about beings relearning how to express themselves. These are not confident proclamations. They are first words.
The restraint has a cost. Across 14 tracks, some pieces feel more like sketches than finished rooms, beautiful fragments that end just as they begin to open. Sprague seems aware of this. The label describes ‘Cyano‘ as a first offering, with more music from the same world already taking shape, and the album often plays like a map with large blank spaces left for later.
Worldbuilding as Empathy
In an era when ambient music is frequently packaged as a productivity aid or sleep soundtrack, Sprague’s insistence on narrative and feeling stands out. She has earned a place among the genre’s most respected voices, booked alongside Grouper for a special show at New York’s Town Hall in September, and ‘Cyano’ extends that seriousness into the physical object: a limited edition of 300 risograph booklets carries her original artwork, turning the planet into something you can hold.
‘Cyano’ is not Sprague’s most immersive record, and it is not trying to be. It is a transmission rather than a destination, a strange and tender opening chapter from an artist willing to risk sounding unfinished in order to say something new. On a planet built from misunderstanding, the most radical act is simply to start speaking. Sprague does, softly, and it is worth leaning in to hear.
