300 years is a mere drop in the ocean when transcendence inspires you to explore the limits of human creativity. Johann Sebastian Bach yearned to touch the infinite and used counterpoint to try to do so: one line of melody answering another, with an organ, a choir, and the restless patience of a man not afraid to keep reaching for what he could feel. He gave what he created to anyone with ears to hear it. In a similar fashion, Raphael Weinroth-Browne reaches for it with a single cello, alone in a room, looping and layering until one voice answers another, offering the same gift of transcendence to an audience Bach could never have imagined. The yearning and the reach have not changed. Only the instruments and the listening audience have.
Empyrean wastes no time introducing itself. Speed of Light (Track 1) opens with the thunderous impact of a church organ cutting through the hushed calm of a cavernous cathedral, except here a single cello delivers the same explosive effect. Single-bowed arpeggios, staccato and abrupt, are menacing in their insistence. A second layer quickly arrives, with short interventions cutting across the first, and a drum pulse locks the two together. The atmosphere is tribal. Old. Ancestral.
Then a majestic cello voice emerges, heavenly, and the mood changes. It soars with a transfixing confidence the arpeggios never possess. The underlying beat softens; the atmosphere becomes calmer, permeating the soundscape with tranquil textures. The melody conveys purpose, certain of where it wants to go.
Just as quickly, everything drops away. The arpeggios return, alone, and the cello re-emerges from behind them, soaring again, unfettered this time, almost carefree. The pulse returns to meet it. Then silence. Abrupt. Total. The kind of visceral absence only sound like this can leave behind.
The experience is fleeting: it lasts long enough to feel, but not so long to become uncomfortable. Enjoyably startling in a way, leaving you genuinely curious: what’s next? The answer comes in two striking segments.
Remnant (Track 2) is a soulfully raw and exposed confession. The cello sounds so much like an organ Bach himself seems to be in the room with us, his rhythm and ornamentation speaking directly. It is also, tellingly, one of only two places on the whole record where Weinroth-Browne plays entirely alone, with no loops, no layers, just a single voice with nowhere to hide.
Evocation (Track 3) answers it with intent. The melody grows earnest, imbued with purpose, a voice reaching towards something it so dearly longs to embody rather than merely describe. But the moment passes: the music slows, losing momentum and crumbling into something closer to rest than to silence. Together, these two tracks completely capture the album’s character: an old voice, alone, yet always reaching outward to become something more.
Then Murmuration (Track 4) arrives, and the mood shifts entirely. Individual voices begin as scattered motion, flitting, dancing, swooping, the many gradually becoming one, as starlings form a single shifting shape against the sky. A strong voice from the cello guides them, giving them direction and joy, until the effect ceases to be merely beautiful and becomes something closer to consolation. It makes me tearful. All is well and all manner of things shall be well, the music seems to say, and momentarily, listening, I can’t help but nod in agreement.
Integration (Track 5) is where the real quest commences. A lone voice calls, yet nothing answers. The same startling silence we encountered earlier, but this time, it lingers. So alone. So lonely. Crying out for something, or someone. To dare, or perhaps even to hope, to touch the immensity of infinity.
A voice in a lower register finally responds, slow and firm. The calling voice does not seem to hear it, continuing its cry into what still sounds like silence. The lower voice falls quiet. The call cries out once more, differently this time, and an electronic pulse rises to meet it, uplifting, enveloping. Finally, the right response. Now the lower voice returns, intertwining rather than opposing, separate yet together, dance partners in faltering step with each other.
A new layer is added, then another, building the way an artist layers oil onto canvas until something genuinely new emerges, two separate hands creating a single picture, neither of which could have been created without the other. It speaks. It addresses you directly; it calls you forth; meets you in the middle ground; becomes you, until there is no longer a listener and a recording, just the experience itself.
Alas, it fades once more, and the initial voice returns. Still calling. Always calling, always reaching.
Dissolution (Track 6) arrives, serious, disciplined, and deliberately measured. The sound is almost choral. Though no voices sing, you can easily imagine robed figures standing in candlelight, solemn and devoted. A melody finally emerges, carrying the force of unmistakable authority, the voice all the others have been listening for, measured, deliberate, certain of itself.
Then it starts to come apart.
The authority begins to splinter, dissipate, and disperse. The voice grows hazy, unsure of itself, no longer knowing what to do or where to go. The experience is visceral. Waves of uncertainty crash over you as the piece collapses, and the feeling is not sadness so much as genuine anxiety, the specific dread of watching something you trusted lose its certainty right in front of you.
Here we feel the price this album asks us to pay. A quest requires a moment of true unmaking before it can become a homecoming. Dissolution is where you pay the ferryman.
Sanctum (Track 7) brings the tentative dawn of a new day. Sunlight begins to warm the cold left by Dissolution’s collapse, and the echoing voice endures, resilient, refusing to give up despite everything. Wandering becomes wondering. Where shall we go? What shall we follow? Having torn itself apart, the world must now be remade from whatever remains.
Despite a foreboding mood of dread, a relentless drive lures us forward. Fragments of Middle Eastern sounds rise, ancient, inviting, whispering across the distance. Come with me, they seem to say. I’ll show you the way. Trust me.
Underneath it all, a soft growl throbs like the foot pedal of some vast, unseen organ, vibrating the bedrock and holding the ground steady even as everything above it still finds its feet.
Reflection (Track 8) arrives with an upbeat pulse, skipping forward like an old steam train gathering speed, eager, purposeful, glad to be moving again. The Middle Eastern tones return, but they have changed. They no longer speak only of what is ancient. They speak to the here-and-now, carrying the past forward into something newly itself. This is continuity discovering it can also be novel.
Now, and only now, can we arrive: Empyrean (Track 9). Peace. Calm. The dissonant voices calling, colliding, tearing each other apart fall silent. A single melody sings, majestic, unafraid, confident. Discord briefly surfaces but only to remind you what clarity sounds like once you recognise it.
And now we arrive at journey’s end. Recognition. We were never travelling somewhere new. It brought us here, now, to what was always there and always waiting for us. You have arrived. More than that: you have come home, to the place you always were without knowing it. The quest is over. Let it go. Rest now. Just be.
Rest is exactly what you need at the end of Empyrean, the contentment of a journey well-travelled settling naturally as the last note fades. This is what reaching for eternity sounds like when the reach succeeds, if only briefly: the reward of capturing, for a few minutes, something of the divine in a listening experience that feels genuinely sublime.
TRACK LISTING
01. Speed of Light (5:07)
02. Remnant (0:41)
03. Evocation (3:53)
04. Murmuration (3:38)
05. Integration (5:51)
06. Dissolution (7:00)
07. Sanctum (5:23)
08. Reflection (4:56)
09. Empyrean (7:34)
Total Time – 44:07
MUSICIAN
Raphael Weinroth-Browne – Acoustic Cello, Amplifiers, Effects Pedals
ADDITIONAL INFO
Record Label: Amanesis Arts
Country of Origin: Canada
Date of Release: 11th September 2026
LINKS
Raphael Weinroth-Browne – Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | YouTube | Instagram
