AMG Review of Trick of the Sea

Dean Carlson
All Music Guide

Darla's monthly Bliss Out series continues with Piano Magic's nautically obsessed excursion into strikingly broody waters. Featuring two somnolent 20-minute ambient halves, most of the attention should actually be directed toward the title track. As it drifts through about three or four main phases -- melodic mantras, underwater pulses, beat-less cries -- its core, grieving vocals by Lucy Gulland punch with the affecting force of a sonic boom. For that reason alone, Trick of the Sea: Bliss Out, Vol. 13 is surely a quiet masterstroke. A drowned grandeur that is difficult to resist, it seduces you like a mermaid taking you down to the bottom of the ocean to open your lungs to the sea.