‘I’ll become night for your sleep, I’ll stay wide, pale and far, a moonbeam, A starry cloak for you to keep, During the dark time of your dreams’ (Peace Of The Unsaid)

Julinko is a musical project based in Treviso in Northeast Italy that has boasted a duality of form over the past decade.  On the one hand, they are a dramatically gothic, doom infused psychedelic trio and on the other, they are a stripped back solo project for vocalist Giulia Parin Zecchin to explore those same musical instincts but through the lens of dark folk.  Naebula is very much the fruit of this latter incarnation.

Its musical palette is relatively restrained, yet saturated in a billowing, sombre mysticism.  Organs segue from the hazily viscous to the assertively jolting, while being intertwined with an understated austerity alongside melodically shimmering guitar and mournfully cascading keys.  Intriguingly, physical percussion is deployed sparingly, yet there is a spectrally pulsing cadence evident throughout.  It is easy to be lured into its otherworldly embrace, only to be jerked unceremoniously back to reality by unexpected, foghorn-like eruptions of discordance.

The soundscape that emerges fuses darkly ambient influences with more folk orientated instincts.  It is equal parts fervent drones and delicate laments, minimalist repetition and dense textures.  This provides the perfect inspiration for the virtuoso vocal performance, which spans Italian, English, French, and Hindi.  It sees Giulia sweep from the glacial murmurs of Peace Of The Unsaid to the haunting whispers of Skin Dress, and then from the swirling incantations of Jeanne De Ríen to the strident urgings of Thow Ashes with a fevered intensity.  Welcome to a hallucinatory shadow world of grief, loss, and new beginnings.