“When It All Goes Quiet” by OLI: Painting silence with sound.

Olivia’s first album is a cinematic alt-pop journey that wowed the listeners — A territory where delay, darkness, and feeling become the stunningly new human.

OLI (Olivia Masek) moved from New Jersey to London when she was two years old and hence has always been between worlds. Her music, which is like both worlds - neither of which is hers fully, and is vast and intimate, cinematic, but still very personal, reflects this duality. Upon hearing her first album, “When It All Goes Quiet”, OLI is acknowledged as one of the most enchanting new London voices who, by blending her music so perfectly, makes film scores for those in-between life scenes.

OLI’s first album captures emotions with both sound and shade – personal, atmospheric, and memorable.

The songs of OLI are those transitional spaces — the silence before the clamor, the shadow before the brightness, the breath before the fall. Her music is rich, with layers of film score-like textures, but in the center of it is her voice: powerful, smooth, and re-humanizing.

"When It All Goes Quiet" is not just a debut album but a meticulously designed world of sound and silence.

Songs from the album are enriched by the strings of cellist Zara Hudson-Kozdoj and, on the vinyl edition, there is also an intimate duet with Dave Gahan from Depeche Mode — a meeting that seems both surprising and fitting with OLI’s universe of dramatic subtlety.

What makes When It All Goes Quiet so compelling is not only its rich synthesizer layers or its grandeur, but also its artistic side. OLI is a character who is not afraid of silence and stretching the feeling as much as she can. Her music is not imposing; it is inviting. And it is in that invitation that the listeners find themselves not only hearing her world but also inhabiting it.

The rest of the songs come after “Intro,” a very soft piano line that sounds like total silence, after which something deeply moving is to be expected. The strings arrive as if they were clouds, gentle and not of this world, inviting the audience to take a long and deep breath, and to rest upon OLI’s world. It is a big step to open in such a minimal way, but it is her point — she is not trying to pull in immediate attention; instead, she is drawing you in.

The songs “When It All Goes Quiet” and “ Float” simply take the whole galaxy to a new level with their vastness. The song does not become loud at the entrance, but rather the voice is opened with release, a release that is felt deeply by the listener. Selecting Cello of Hudson-Kozdoj on "Zara's Song", which is also one of the album's most striking moments, the track moves like a film score, conjuring both haunting darkness and fleeting light.

The lower strings ache with sorrow while the higher notes feel like slivers of hope cutting through. It's impressive as a film score, a very personal kind that one experiences with listening, and it becomes a world inside your chest.

The next-door neighbor, “Beauty Queen,” elaborates on the whole record to a piece of something tender and brave. Filled with euphoria and, at the same time, extremely delicate, the track does not use the standard fireworks of love to present it, but chooses intimacy instead. "This feels like symmetry," OLI sings, describing the feeling of love when two people decide to create something strong and safe together. At the same time, it can be perceived as the last chapter of the record wrapped in warmth and touching on the vastness of space left to discover.

This is only the beginning for OLI. She has already shown with her dawn-like soft voice and dusk-like high one that silence is not the absence of sound but the place where feelings are most vivid. When It All Goes Quiet is not just a debut album — it is a door. By crossing it, you might just end up somewhere new. Her first album is not just a listen, it is a habitation.