At its best, music is a feeling. Even before the first note hits, the experience is already alive; dropping the needle onto a new record for the first time, the room’s dust particles serenading you through the silence of the run-in groove. And then, all in an instant, immeasurable change. At its best, music isn’t really worth talking about–it seems somewhat futile not to just be listening, drinking it in.

DJ Counselling’s Caring EP is an ode to these unbound frontiers of music. More interested in atmosphere than narrative, more concerned with the celebration of sound than the promotion of a style, the record transports its listener to the sonically singular world of DJ Counselling from the moment the stylus rings out the record’s first note.

While this record shies away from no emotional depth, it refuses the allure of sadness. And while this record covers vast expanses of the musical landscape, it holds to a joy situated in starry heights. The music ultimately seeks to strip everything else away so there are only two things left: you, and the song.