“The Vow” is just the latest in a long line of recordings made in the last three years that have asked different questions about the nature of sound. The last two albums by the Berlin based New York band Starpower are pieces of acoustic-only cinema that seem to be drawn in the same direction as early early electronic music.

The album’s first track, “Tunnel”, begins as an impromptu tour through the space of a telephone booth in the dormitory lobby of a university, the sounds of the voiceless surfacing in the abyss. The second track, “Breathing”, is a three-part electronic piece that begins as a string of hums and clicks, then begins to slowly swell with compression of the air. The third track, “Loudmouth (Mental)”, is a gathering of sounds that seem to be drawn from the same beltway as the Hudson River. The album’s final track, “The Vow”, is a celestial ten-minute piece that makes it one of the densest sounds I’ve heard this year.

This album sounds like it’s been released on a chain of cassette tapes. It’s not a perfect analog to the Internet’s flood of sound recordings, but it’s a proof of the persistence of a project that often takes years to realize. The project has a home on a website where you can track its progress and download it. It is a good way to experience the project’s larger vision.

“The Vow” is an album that doesn’t just make you think about the possibilities of sound and the unresolved questions of creation, it starts you thinking about the world at large.