It’s been a few weeks since Error Broadcast dropped “Colour Is Breathe“, the debut album from Iranian-born, Scottish-raised producer Soroosh Khavari, aka Soosh. It’s an album that grabs you on first listen, enveloping you in its melancholy, but with every listen it feels at once like an old friend and a new acquaintance. Opening with the wistful feedback loops and stuttering synths of “For You“, it sways back and forth, pausing and growing, being born in your ears for the first time every time you hear it. “The Space Between” lifts the mood, its woozy, arpeggiated synths beaming outwards like sunshine on an early summer’s day. Scorched refrains and expansive melodies float alongside Soosh’s wavy singing, carefully dipped between phrases, never taking the shine off the track’s central thrust.

“Loving” manages to peek out above the other tracks, meekly, gently, unassumedly. It’s hard to pinpoint a highlight from an album as quietly intoxicating as this one, but if we were forced to pick, this would probably be it. Quivering blobs of sound play off bouncing bassline stabs. The track’s title is repeated beyond the point of meaning, giving way to further vocal refrains before it finds its way back, its very repetition driving home its simple beauty. While the album is underpinned with a sort of languid sorrow, some of the tracks trade heavily in dancefoor tropes, from the gurgling bassline of “Loving” to the lurching 4/4 of “Our Dream“. “The Way You” blends pops and clicks with percussion that wouldn’t feel out of place next to an Aaliyah vocal. Instead, we have the muttered utterings of its creator combined with the breezy stylings of Carmel Khavari, his 17-year-old sister, whose vocals add levity and brightness to four of the album’s tracks.

“Uncertain” feels like an album closer, its mournful riff hinting at the end of a moment in time. What follows are two more contemplative vignettes, replete with dreamlike drum machine, Burial-style woodblocks, and synths that ebb and flow with hope and loss. It’s the perfect end, and Soosh himself summed it up when speaking to Sonic Router about the life experience that went into the album’s production: “[I]t’s never easy peasy this life ‘ting, but I think my music has a hope to it even in the darkness.“

Stream: Soosh – Colour Is Breathe (Error Broadcast)

Soosh – Colour Is Breathe is out now on Error Broadcast. Buy here.