Living in Pennsylvania I can attest that the weather has been frustratingly uneven for the past few weeks. Where most loathe winter, I love it, but when it’s time for spring I’m more than ready to hang up my coat and scarf and enjoy the increasingly warm weather. But with the way the weather has been recently, it’s been hard to do that. Just when I think that things are finally warming up and I can go outside and enjoy the sunlight, a curveball in the form of a freak snowstorm crashes the party and sets everything back a few weeks. Then there is the eventual slush and mud and sludge to deal with before going outside to enjoy the weather can become a reality. Because I’m the kind of person who loves to match music with the perfect environment, my listening habits of late have been just as schizophrenic as the uneven weather. Though one constant, no matter what the crazy surroundings, has been Symbol‘s Online Architecture, a surprisingly versatile album, especially when considering that it’s a collection of quiet, ambient works.

For the past few weeks I’ve tested Online Architecture out under many different circumstances and it’s held up well to all of them. Whether I was in the shower, doing some much-needed yard work, or just lazing about, the music of Christopher Royal King has proven not only to be adaptable but surprisingly fitting as well—rain or shine. This, of course, shouldn’t really come as a surprise, as King is a founding member and lead guitarist for post-rock group This Will Destroy You and is no stranger to creating music that is heavy on atmosphere and feeling. But Online Architecture is a different beast and wastes no time in revealing itself as such. And while it takes its time setting up to pull you in, the magnetism is strong and steady and begins to work its magic on your before you realize it. Before long, you find yourself completely in King’s headspace, tuning in to his very specific frequencies.

When I featured the album’s first single, “Clear Passage,” a few weeks ago, I commented on how the track managed to feel both organic and alien. It was as if King had tapped into some lost transmissions on some unknown frequency that have, over time, become one with the outreaches of space itself. Fortunately, that weird but enjoyable dichotomy is largely present on the album as a whole as well. There is a warmth that radiates from these delicate, plodding tracks that feels like the gentle background hiss on your favorite cassettes, and yet at the same time the album feels distinctly electronic, almost mechanic. And though Christopher King has unmistakably absorbed his surroundings, reinterpreted them, and put them to tape, the face behind the music becomes blurred as the songs take on lives of their own. They churn, breathe, and swell as if the first whispers of life that King breathed into them has made them these independent entities. Living up to its name, the whole of Online Architecture is a collection of these living, fluid structures whose true joy is derived from just standing back and taking in their grandeur.

This brings me back to the versatility of Online Architecture. Although it’s an album that aims at a very specific aesthetic, the end product ends up being very much elastic and malleable. It adapts to its surroundings and merges with them in a strange display of musical synthesis. And while ambient music has largely been the fodder for background noise whether as the soundtrack for a film or mood music for a spa, it’s also a genre that is hard to truly master. I can count on one hand the number of ambient albums that have resonated with me on an emotional level in the last couple of years, and that’s largely because these albums became more than the sum of their parts. They tap into something inherently human and pull the emotion right out of me. I’m happy to say that Online Architecture is one of those albums. Christopher Royal King has distilled himself and his experiences down into something beautiful and universal—an album that requires effort from its listeners but the rewards are exponential. It’s currently cold and raining and incredibly windy, so I think I’ll go spin Online Architecture one more time. You should consider joining me.

Online Architecture is available now via Holodeck Records.