About Illustrated Reverie

Illustrated Reverie is a small editorial desk for two things we never stopped caring about: records that reward patient listening, and the ordinary domestic life happening while those records play.

The music half of the site grew out of years of writing about instrumental and post-rock releases — album reviews, monthly release round-ups, and the occasional long conversation with a label or an artist. The family half is exactly what it sounds like: honest notes on raising small children, feeding them, travelling with them, and staying reasonably sane in the process.

What you will find here

Release of the Month. A recurring round-up of the records our writers kept returning to, with enough context to know whether a record is for you before you spend anything on it.

Album reviews. Full-length pieces on instrumental, ambient, modern-composition and post-rock releases, written by people who listen to a record more than twice before writing about it.

Family and living. Practical, unsentimental writing about children, food, recipes without sugar or gluten, day trips, and the parts of parenting nobody photographs.

How we write

Every piece here is a full article rather than a summary — if a topic cannot carry several hundred words of genuine detail, we do not publish it. Reviews describe the actual sound of a record instead of ranking it against a chart. Family articles describe what we tried, what failed, and what we would do differently.

We keep the archive readable rather than large. Older pieces stay online because a good review of a 2007 record is still a good review, and a recipe that worked then still works now.

Get in touch

Corrections, disagreements, and recommendations are all welcome. If a review missed something obvious, we would rather hear it than not.