Laying in the darkness. Floating, surrounded by nothing but space. Soft sounds caress your ears through the black… laughter. A voice, perhaps on a radio. An acoustic guitar… drums. Still drifting, ‘Aimless’ through the void, the sounds are soothing. They’ve become an uplifting, yearning euphony that tugs gently at your blood. You feel calm, giving yourself over to this dreamlike music; ascending and descending melodies with progressions designed to merge with every fiber of your being and glow. To dissolve all stresses and heal all wounds – yet at the same time unstitch them and leave them beautifully raw. This is Insomnia, the latest album of Russian post-black project A LIGHT IN THE DARK.

Since 2012, with A Light In The Dark sole practitioner B.M. (also of the impressive Skyforest, Blurry Lights and Hiki) has composed “uplifting music for sad souls”, and his creations tap into a very modern turmoil. Improving with every release, we find Insomnia a record for those alone in their apartments, broken down by life and barely going through the motions. The kind of music that’s oddly comforting when you’re near your lowest point and you have nobody to turn to. Each of these eight tracks are like wrapping a warm blanket around you on a cold night as ethereal tones calm your troubled heart; and as a result, this is the type of music that might even save someone’s life.

From a technical viewpoint the ultimate strength of A Light In The Dark is B.M‘s compositional skill. After eight years in the game he knows exactly what to do to make a track great, and while some of it admittedly might seem formulaic he’s giving you exactly what you need at all times, all done exceptionally well. Take the final track ‘Her Footprints In The Snow’, for example. An instrumental piece, it’s still incredibly impactful and the way it builds and flows is near faultless. Is it breaking any boundaries? No. But it doesn’t have to – it nails the feeling it’s going for with consummate skill. Other tracks take more post-rock/shoegaze routes but all have the same enchanting qualities, and almost all are satisfying journeys.

If anything (and yes, I’m bracing myself to cop a lot of hate for this), I’d say the weakest single element of the A Light In The Dark sound is his mid-range or “spoken” clean vocals. They do the job but they’re nothing mind-blowing, especially when highlighted – the fourth track ‘四’ in particular suffers from this. An entirely acoustic/electronic number, I do get what he was going for, and it does provide much-needed variety to the album, but unfortunately, his vocals just aren’t strong enough to carry it at all, and the whole thing falls on the wrong side of naff. When he uses a higher register his voice is far better, and his harsh vox are also solid.

Overall however, Insomnia is a pretty and supremely melancholic album that (as expected of B.M‘s work) does enough of its own thing to escape being unceremoniously lumped in as another generic Lantlôs / Alcest type deal, standing well and steady on its own two feet. It’s very contemporary, saccharine stuff, bittersweet – barely black metal (it is “post”, after all), and definitely not for everyone. But for those who find themselves in a dark place, barely afloat; those who are receptive to its touch… it might just be exactly what you need to get through the night. And that is a very good thing.