Lansing, Michigan’s Auburn Lull is a dream-pop quartet that has been creating music since the mid 1990s. On their third full-length release, Begin Civil Twilight, the band continues to expand upon their sound self-producing a spacey, droney and thoroughly atmospheric affair.

The twelve tracks on Begin Civil Twilight flow without a glitch into each other. The ambience of songs such as “Grange Arcade” and “Light Through the Canopy” recalls early nineties acts such as Slowdive, particularly during their experimental peak circa Pygmalion. “Stanfield Echo” features sleepy acoustic guitar and is as delicate and richly layered as anything on the album.

Shimmering guitars flow in and out of focus throughout the album and slow washes of analog keyboards provide a fluid backbone to the bulk of the material. There is a dreamlike quality to both the music and the almost nonexistent ethereal vocal delivery. Begin Civil Twilight is a cinematic plateau of drugged out bliss. The sound captured to tape on this recording is that of film sequences that inhabit dreams of afterlife from intoxicated paradisiacal heights.

Auburn Lull is a rare American group for anyone interested in the shoegaze genre and/or the ambient works of Brian Eno. It is the opposite of anything resembling traditional rock music, and provides a surprisingly warm sound despite the lack of rhythm in the sweeping songs.