Some music works best when kept secret. Victory and Good Hunting appears to belong to this specific category, for the mind behind this one-man project concentrates on embellishing his self-titled debut with a cozy and homely feeling rather than engaging with the likes of viral promotion. Hatched by The Gift Shop Records, this is one album that prog people are likely to mention in the near future.

Victory and Good Hunting starts off on a melancholy route, but no sooner has it set out than it alters its pace and mood. The musician explores his piano’s versatile character, creating imaginative melodies, meant to tell the simplest of stories in the least pretentious manner. And so they do, for the album is all about warmth, conveying emotions and stroking sensitive chords.

Gentle and fragile notes stick together in a punctilious manner and somehow, all arrangements are of airy consistency, constraining one’s mind to envisage thousands of butterflies ordering themselves on a washing line. Grave but innocent and classical in more than one way, the music here sounds natural and open, like a wound bleeding out harmony and beauty. But Victory and Good Hunting is not entirely about piano and nature sounds, and one is soon to realize he is dealing with a slightly curious ambient album, when “Monkey” and “Bear” kick in with their vintage atmosphere and feel-good sensation, almost like an interlude in a French film OST. The experiments are so fitting in the whole context that these 27 minutes of bliss would sound affected if the short, uncanny pieces went missing. This way however, your expectations are tricked and you might end up being pleasantly surprised by the album’s eclecticism and its adherence to the whole "the more things change, the more they stay the same" philosophy.

Throughout the record’s entirety, nothing seems too much; everything stands in its predetermined position, and acts like a pawn in a game of structures and balance. The songs don’t end abruptly; they hit all the right spots before they finish, and then their mood hangs in the air for an indeterminate period of time. This is one album you’ll forget and then come back to time and time again, if not for the touching music, then to remind yourself of the wonders hidden in the bare and unadorned tracks.

Now imagine that in your search for moments, all the colors in the world become white. In this absolute space, the music perfectly congregates with one’s feelings and vision, and in such a space Victory and Good Hunting stops, if only for a while, being just a piece of music and becomes peace of mind.

-Diana Sitaru