8/10

There are albums that aim for cinematic scale, and then there are records like 'Legacy' that seem to exist entirely outside the boundaries of ordinary songwriting altogether. Built around towering emotional themes and immersive world-building, the project unfolds like a myth being whispered through broken machinery, collapsing relationships, and flickers of hope buried beneath the wreckage.

Led by composer and producer Tiff Randol, aka IAMEVE, 'Legacy' confronts transformation in all its uncomfortable forms. Yet for all its darkness, the record is ultimately obsessed with survival, and with what remains after destruction has already happened. And that emotional weight gives the album extraordinary gravity.

'Legacy' operates in a space between cinematic electronica, dark art-pop, and expansive ambient composition. Massive analogue synths swell against delicate vocal passages, choral layers drift through the mix like ghosts carrying fragments of memory, and songs move fluidly between intimacy and overwhelming scale, often within the same passage, creating the sensation of standing inside something both deeply personal and apocalyptic.

There are moments throughout 'Legacy' that recall the emotional ambition of FKA twigs, the widescreen electronic melancholy of Björk, or the immersive architecture of AURORA during her more atmospheric work, but IAMEVE’s vision remains singular because it refuses easy categorisation. This is not merely electronic music, nor purely soundtrack composition, nor experimental art-pop. It exists somewhere between all three.

In lesser hands, an album this ambitious could easily collapse beneath its own weight. Instead, 'Legacy' succeeds because every decision feels emotionally motivated. The result is a record that feels enormous without losing intimacy, delivering a darkly luminous meditation on what survives us, what shapes us, and what we choose to carry forward when everything else burns away.