Even though Vancouver is entering its seven-month rainy season, the new release from Teen Daze brings forth sun-drenched synths and looped effects as endless as stars on a warm clear night. And though Jamison, the brains behind Teen Daze, usually has a penchant for ambient offerings, A Silent Planet succeeds without resting on the laurels of easy hooks and catchy beats featured on its predecessors.

It is not surprising that Jamison is able to pull off somewhat of a concept record inspired by C.S. Lewis’ novel Out of a Silent Planet given his track record for contagious songwriting. It is equally not surprising that Teen Daze hails from Abbotsford, a rather smallish rural community an hour outside of Vancouver with an emerging cultural attitude that has spawned excellent bands like You Say Party among others. What is somewhat curious is how a young Mennonite can create a soundtrack to a quest for a transcendental experience without the attributes of a sermon. A Silent Planet features very few words relying mostly on the congregation of layered synths hooked up to an active loop pedal or three and, as is evident from his past releases, Teen Daze is not one to use his art as a preaching mechanism, or at least the message is layered in subtley.

The album has a way of generating a meditative state resulting in a somewhat conscious out of body experience aimed at training the senses to be more in touch with their surroundings. By its design, A Silent Planet speaks to human fragility and it is a fitting relationship that an author whose works often contain parallels to religous themes is the guiding beacon of light. Here lies what is perhaps the greatest contributing factor that distinguishes the six tracks on A Silent Planet from the throngs of ambient soundscapes produced in basements and bedrooms worldwide; there is an awareness that the effort put forth on the album represents something deeper and more meaningful then just a few sounds strung together over a computer monitor. The record represents the energy of a novel as if it were being turned into a screenplay. The result is two fold. First, the EP presents as a pleasing listening experience throughout with tunes like ‘Surface’ or ‘Harvest’ resonating in the cranial listening centre for lenghty durations. Secondly, by association, one can’t help but want to read the book the music was intended for. If A Silent Planet is any indication, there is warmth, comfort, mystery, isolation, sadness and spiritual awakening in space travel.