The lineage she draws on wears itself openly. You can hear Debussy's fingerprints in the way chords bloom and dissolve rather than resolve neatly; you can hear Hans Zimmer's cinematic patience in the way phrases build slowly toward moments of release; and you can hear Nobuo Uematsu's game-score sentimentality in the melodic hooks that surface, linger, then slip back beneath the surface. None of this feels like imitation. D'Esprit folds these influences into something more intimate than any of her reference points — closer to a diary entry than a soundtrack cue.

"The Gaze of the Depths" opens with a spareness that borders on austere, single notes hanging in the air with real patience before the harmony thickens beneath them. It's a piece that rewards close listening on headphones, where the stereo miking pays off handsomely — you catch the mechanical clatter of hammer against string, the sustain pedal's soft creak, the room breathing around the instrument. This isn't a polished, sterile piano sample library; it's a living object being touched by a living hand, and the recording never lets you forget that.

"Liminal Horizon" is the record's emotional centre of gravity, a piece that earns its title by refusing to settle into a single mood. It drifts between melancholy and something closer to hope, never quite landing on either, which is precisely the point — this is music about the threshold states of memory, not their destinations. D'Esprit's phrasing here has real vocal quality; you find yourself humming along before you notice you're doing it.

This is a genuinely affecting piece of work, made with evident sincerity and a clear compositional voice. D'Esprit's own line, "life happens between the notes," could sound like studio-bio flourish on paper, but on record it plays out as something closer to a working method — this is music built from silence and space as much as from melody. It's a small, unshowy album that asks to be heard in a quiet room, late at night, without distraction. Give it that, and it repays you generously.