Precious by Frances Yonge
Some records ask you to turn the volume up. “Precious” asks you to close your eyes. Frances Yonge’s new EP isn’t built for playlists or passing moments — it’s built for nightfall. Across seventeen unhurried minutes, she layers a hypnotic piano motif with breath-soft vocals and meditative mantras designed to calm the nervous system rather than stimulate it. The lyrics drift through images gathered from friends describing the edge of sleep — gleaming oceans, purple light, luminous stars, velvet skies — even the gentle “ping” of a pinball machine bouncing dreams around in the dark. It feels less like a performance and more like being guided somewhere safe.
That sense of safety is intentional. Yonge, a trained pianist and composer who studied at the University of Southampton and holds a DipABRSM diploma, has long built her career around atmosphere and emotional connection. Since 2011 she has created live piano music for educational workshops at the Royal Opera House, shaping ballet scores into living, breathing soundscapes for dancers in motion. You can hear that same sensitivity here — the instinct to follow feeling rather than formula. When the first motif settles, a second emerges around the eleven-minute mark, a melody she originally wrote to call her own children toward rest. It’s maternal without being sentimental.
The production, handled by her husband Paul Sayers, enhances the immersive quality without overwhelming it — layers of reverb and delay creating depth, but never so much that the vocal disappears into haze. “Precious” doesn’t rush to resolve anything. It simply repeats its quiet reassurance: you are safe, you are loved, you can let go now. In a world that rarely powers down, that might be its boldest gesture.
English