Inal Bilsel - Once Upon a Cloudtop Meadow

​Inal Bilsel

Once Upon a Cloudtop Meadow
self-released; 2025

​​​By ​Dino DiMuro

Inal Bilsel is an award-winning composer-producer from Cypress who’s just released a concept album titled Once Upon a Cloudtop Meadow. This is a fairy tale-inspired work that’s basically Alice in Wonderland in the Sky. Bilsel utilizes filmic soundscapes, experimental textures and intricately arranged compositions to build his score. Different genres including jazz fusion, classical and ambient also make their mark. Cinematic orchestration rubs shoulders with playful experimentation, found sounds and ethereal textures. 

Bilsel’s day jobs include composing scores for short films, creating immersive sound design for art exhibitions and performing at festivals with his band Nostalgia For The Future, as well as solo. 

Aside from the composing and performing, this is album was also a labor of love in creating the best possible sound for the music. Mixing took over a year, with an ear toward audiophile listeners (though Bilsel says the music will work with simpler setups!). The tracks were mixed in 96kHz audio with mastering by the esteemed Bob Katz, ensuring an impeccable dynamic range. The album was purposely mixed more quietly than the norm, “allowing the quietest moments to breathe and the climaxes to soar.” The album can be downloaded on Bandcamp and most streamers, or heard in its entirety on YouTube.

I played this album mostly on a new set of Koss headphones, and a little bit on my car’s Bose system. As expected, it sounds amazing, like the soundtrack of a movie in a state-of-the-art theater. An epic in every way, it runs over an hour and features 14 tracks along with a continuing story you can read along with. Rather than go track by track, here are some overall impressions.

Though there are no musical credits aside from Blisel, I would be shocked if most (if not all) of this work wasn’t recorded on a scoring stage with a full compliment of strings, horns and percussion. Obviously keyboards play a huge part in driving the melodies forward (I can hear piano, analog and digital synths, virtual instruments and even theremin!) and I sort of imagine Bilsel seated at the center of the studio, creating his sound while directing the other players.

The music has no vocals per se, but starting from the beginning and peeking in throughout are bits of dialogue from an Alice in Wonderland-type girl speaking in Croation. Bilsel approaches most sections in a similar fashion, starting with gentle, ambient chords with transparent arpeggios. The main melodies are often played with quavering Moog-like patches. Percussion generally feels orchestral in nature, with a tasty stereo spread. As the compositions develop, there’s early Genesis-like synth improvisations. Strings (virtual or real, I can’t tell!) seem to dominate the earlier sections (“Meet Cloudman”), with horns introduced toward the middle tracks.

Some tracks (like “Sleepwalker”) seem to contain multiple parts and moods, practically a movie in themselves. Vocal choruses sometimes appear, adding yet another layer to the tracks. The found sounds I’m hearing are mostly birds, bells and winds, though there’s other things I can’t quite identify. Certain melodies have a childlike musical box quality (“A is for Aga,” “Berceuse for Lulu”). 80’s-like synth pulses also pop up from time to time (“A Night at the Cloudtop Imaginarium”). In “Berceuse for Lulu” I was surprised to hear what sounded like a saw blade played with a bow! Bilsel is also not averse to sprinkling in a few backward sounds here and there. Though mostly instrumental, the track “K’yango’s Lament” does feature a chorus of childlike voices. Marimba or xylophone stands out in a track like “Our Time Together.”

To say I’ve only scratched the surface here is an understatement. Every track contains multitudes within multitudes, and is presented with creativity, taste and skill. The only thing left to do is listen!

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