Since 2016, British Columbia's Crystal Dorval, aka White Poppy, has been exploring what she calls "Paradise Music" through a vivid melange of new age music, DIY shoegaze drones, and lilting bossa nova rhythms. Over eight years, she recorded what will soon count as three albums - collectively known as the "Paradise Gardens" trilogy - exploring this distinct take on transcendental tropicalia.

The exact moment that I knew I was all in on her forthcoming third album in the trilogy, "Ataraxia", was when the fourth song on the record, fittingly titled 'Soul Utopia', started slinking through my headphones. Beginning with some chirpy field recordings and an elegant mid-summer guitar figure, 'Soul Utopia' quickly drifts out to see, unfolding into a heavenly blend of polished synthesiser pads, gently swaying drum machines and understated-but-funky bass. If you need a reference point, consider the French film soundtrack composer Eric Serra's work on "Le Grand Bleu" or even moments on the recent Total Blue album.

Compared to the previous two volumes in Dorval's trilogy, "Paradise Gardens" (2020) and "Sound Of Blue" (2023), "Ataraxia" (a state of supreme calmness) feels like composition by subtraction. By distilling her soundworld down into the simplest of elements, she dials up the emotional resonance, creating a suite of nine blissed-out pieces that feel like fragments of dreams and memories of golden moments. Not Not Fun has evoked the idea of "Ataraxia" as muzak for waterfront boardwalks. While they're not wrong, there's something deeper going on here - a nonspecific sense of purification, processing and acceptance, perhaps?

Like spending the days of a vacation relaxing in a beautiful seaside town during the right time of year, many songs on "Ataraxia" feel similar. Still, amidst that sense of repetition, I'm reminded that repetition is a form of change. You hear something one way. Several listens later, and you're hearing it differently. This is the good stuff.

"Ataraxia" is available to pre-order in a range of vinyl and digital formats now via Not Not Fun (purchase here)