*For the Bandcamp 7" exclusivethat comes with the Peach vinyl, head here.

Kadhja Bonets second album, Childqueen now out on Fat Possum records issomething of a Heros Quest. In the opening Procession, above a muted drummers march,an unseen oracle announces to you, the listener: every morning is a chance to renew, achance to renew. This is your first clue, setting you upon a path not to treasure, nor agrail, nor even a long lost love, but highest of all, what Kadhja has christened thechildqueen, that innermost self that you were truthfully and instinctively before the pressof the world came crushing in. As with her 2016 debut The Visitor, the songs onChildqueen are never casual, never ditties. Instead they invite us into a world not whollyour own, a half-mythical atmosphere where past and future meet in a parallel, yetfaraway, present. Acting as a sort of diffuse chanteuse, Kadhjas almost painfully lovelyvoice achieves what can only be described as ambient song. Particularly in songs likeDelphine and Nostalgia, we hear the jazzier intricacies of the vocal melodies brushed softat the edges, at times so soft they vaporize into pure mood, or merge with otherinstruments or with backing vocals that seem emanate from celestials bodies. And theinstruments played mostly by the polymathic Bonet herself mix the cinematicallyand classically orchestral with the noticeably more synthetic. On tracks like ThoughtsAround Tea or Another Time Lover, flutes, violins, guitars, drums, and bells share or tradethe stage with acousmatic warbles, whooshes and lines, each gently couching the contoursof the others. The result is a soundscape the listener sinks into, a sound that combinessofter enchantments with an ever-listenable experimentalism, unplaceable in genre anddecade from beginning to end.

Despite its soft tones however, despite its listenability, Childqueen challenges us as muchas Kadhjas self-description: I dont like calling myself an artist. I dont like calling myself asinger or even a musician. This isnt just paradox. Kadhja came to music early through amaniacally rigorous classical training in her childhood, mastering the violin and viola, inaddition to picking up flute, guitar, and formal composition. But she abandoned classicalmusic for wilder groves, and credits what she now creates as springing from a place ofintuition and candid self-reflection rather than theory or her academic past. The Kadhjathat leads us through Childqueen is unyielding, truth-seeking, and even mildlymisanthropic, dismayed by humanitys talent for self-deception. She urges us to do better.These urges may come in rebuffs to our daily thoughtlessness, from the possible lovesacrificed to business sense in Thoughts Around Tea to the caustic calls from the title track:whats the matter, dont you got a man, to tell you what youre worth to him? Where you beenat Childqueen? At other points, her tone turns imploring, as in Delphine, or encouragingas in Second Winds reminder that sometimes I forget, moss grows from my lips. I am fertile. Iam rich. I am moist and mineral.The lyrics and melodic lines nudge us along a path of self-discovery or act asbreadcrumbs along her own path. Everything that you hear on Childqueen was written,played, produced, and even mixed by Kadhja, who has always produced all her ownmusic, insisting on a total vision that is nearly as difficult to co-create as a dream. Shedoes confess: this record crushed my ego, and Im surprised Im still alive. It pried her open abit, recorded over two years between performances to larger audiences brimming with acommunal spirit, and in studios scattered throughout the globe Paris, Berlin,Amsterdam, London, Copenhagen, and even in hotel rooms in Barcelona and Brussels.Nevertheless, music remains for Kadhja Bonet a primarily solitary activity, one in whichshe can tender a connection with that innermost self, the childqueen. The rest of theworld, if it pleases, is welcome to listen in, and join her on the quest.