Throughout the late ’90s and early ’00s, Darla Records released the “Bliss Out” series of albums. As the title implies, the series encouraged already atmospherically minded artists to follow their, um, bliss, and make music completely untethered from worldly concerns. Over the course of twenty albums, “Bliss Out” spotlighted some fantastic artists, including Amp, Junior Varsity KM, Piano Magic, and Windy & Carl. But it’s Manual’s The North Shore, which closed out the “Bliss Out” series in 2004, that I’ve listened to the most over the years.

As expected from Jonas Munk, The North Shore is filled with wisps of melancholy ambience and synthesizer drift. It’s uniformly lovely, but the album reaches its apotheosis on the penultimate “Ica,” which was actually written by Munk’s frequent collaborator, bassist Jess Kahr. Sparse yet intimate, the song’s gentle cascades and shimmering pools of sound describe the same sonic and emotional territory that Cocteau Twins explored on 1986’s Victorialand.

Despite its subdued nature, or perhaps because of it, I find “Ica” to be completely enrapturing, and even though it crosses the five-minute mark, it always ends too soon. It’s the sort of song that I actually struggle to describe with words, and I actually find it necessary to restrain myself lest I start sounding too pretentious about it.