In their Feeling of the Day report, a recurring segment on KCRW, Brian Eno and Beatie Wolfe explore the emotions as they are experienced in different languages, attempting to articulate feelings for which no words exist in English. Recent choices have included duende, which they describe as shivering with thrill; eudaimonia, gratitude for things going well; ailyak, going slow and enjoying the process; and dor, longing or belonging. They’re all big and existential, the kinds of feelings that require wrestling with. Where better to unpack them than in song?

That is the driving question of the duo’s debut collaborative albums, Luminal and Lateral. They frame the albums in terms similar to those of their Feeling of the Day report: They want to make music that elicits thorny and tangled emotions, the kind that aren’t always easy to articulate. Music, they offer, “is about making feelings happen,” a fairly obvious conclusion to draw. But while the uniqueness of hard-to-define feelings is the duo’s starting point, their music only rarely matches that complexity.

Eno and Wolfe share a longtime interest in the power of music to help us make sense of our inner worlds. The observation of feeling has been a central part of Eno’s practice. Music, he has proposed, should create a sense of calm, color the mood in a room, or give space for minds to wander. The idea has driven Eno’s series of classic ambient albums and generative works like Discreet Music. Wolfe, a conceptual artist whose work frequently engages with science and technology, also touches on the power of feeling—considering, for example, the therapeutic value of music for people with neurological conditions like dementia.

Though recorded piecemeal throughout 2024, both albums offer cohesive visions: Luminal is lush dream pop, and Lateral wafting ambient. Both take a zoomed-out approach, focusing less on minute details and more on the sweeping effects of their melodies. On Luminal, fuzzy vocals and tender instrumentals swirl into an amorphous cloud; on Lateral, a simple repeating motif floats, nearly unchanging, for 64 minutes. In both cases, the music lacks nuance. Their straightforward melodies rarely shift or grow; the pulse is gentle; the dynamics hover around a comfortable mezzo-forte (with the occasional mezzo-piano, for variety). The music is characterized, above all, by its restraint; it sometimes feels as if the two musicians want to create the perfect feeling in a lab, rather than let it swallow them whole.