Since launching her solo project YlangYlang in 2012, Canadian producer Catherine Debard has split her time between gigs in Montreal’s subterranean experimental scene and the more formalized world of artists residencies, workshops and academic programming. Over time, her iridescent synth drones and sparse laptop beats have gelled into an abstract ambient pop that’s as equally suited to attentive gallery space performances as the kind of venues you have to direct message for their address. With her new album Interplay, Debard layers her raw electronics with live instruments, building introspective and sophisticated songs glazed in noise.

Debard has worked alone for the majority of her YlangYlang discography, but here she invites a host of other musicians into the booth. The chopped bell samples and synth arpeggio that lay the foundation for “Dualities” open up to include squeaking cellos and stray clangs from a dulcimer-like instrument called a santur. Every timbre floats shapelessly, only fusing together when a wave of ugly static engulfs the mix. In “Our Provisional,” distant horns meander amid scrambled electronics before rising up in a moment of harmonic clarity. “Lost Realms,” one of several instrumentals, begins with a wash of textural noise that recedes into a tide pool of layered brass and woodwinds.

YlangYlang’s latent new age tendencies also take on a new depth here. In the past, these inclinations manifested as superficial signifiers like a tape of self-described “therapeutic” improv jams (titled You might want to burn some sage, no less) or the soundtrack to a hypnosis meditation. While there are still references to healing ceremonies and neural pathways, the new age undertones on Interplay surface most when Debard approaches emotional turbulence from a place of spiritual calm. She circles back repeatedly to themes of solitude and separation, ultimately giving herself over to the will of the universe.

-Fred Thomas (Pitchfork)