The unsuspecting listeners might not remember that we did an interview with Cracks In The Real in 2024. Aside from the usual ‘how time flies’ comments, that information provides a very fitting jumping point into this review, given that we are already partly familiar with the project’s deep, reflective ethos. Treating sounds and textures as storytelling tools, Cracks In The Real has developed a monumental aural universe, one that’s cathartic and boundary-pushing, but also urgent and intense. ‘Alef: A Velvet Shard of Broken Nights End’ is the perfect evidence of that, an album that marks a crucial milestone for the American creative.
Championing the project’s eclecticism, the record moves boldly left-of-field, sporting Cracks In The Real’s usual blend of industrial electronica, ambient soundscapes and distorted shoegaze hooks. Yet, it’s also much more than that. You see, every frequency on the album is a piece of sonic tragedy, a nugget of purposeful aural storytelling drenched in nostalgia and melancholic allure. It seeks to narrate a story, one that doesn’t require words or flashy slogans, but that requires feelings and moods. In that, Cracks In The Real is deeply successful: ‘Alef: A Velvet Shard of Broken Nights End’ is largely hypnotic and brooding, a body of work that fiercely ties together modern influences with remnants of 19th Century Romantic symphonic music.
It’s the perfect marriage between noise and harmony, evidence of how every particle of sound matters, each one writing a new chapter of the same story. Delving deeper into the record, Cracks In The Real explains: “The project exists in the shadows between noise and silence, where distortion becomes prayer and rhythm fractures into revelation. This is not artifice. This is not an algorithm. This is a real person choosing invisibility to let the work breathe on its own terms.”
Recommended! Discover ‘Alef: A Velvet Shard of Broken Nights End’ now: