Syndesis
[The Best Field Recordings on Bandcamp, August 2025] “The water lapping against the shore, the bells of the Agios Georgios church, and the chattering of tourists all rise and subside alongside Cocolas’s instrumentals, giving an achingly personal touch to the country’s deep history.” Matthew Blackwell, Bandcamp
[9 Great Ambient Albums from Summer 2025] “a deeply immersive experience” Ernesto Aguilar,Treblezine
[Best New Ambient September 2025] “Syndesis falls somewhere between ambient and post-classical, combining Cocolas’ compositional finesse with a deep interest in sound textures” Stephan Kunze, Zensounds
“On “Syndesis,” [Cocolas] translates her emotional response to a thrillingly diverse collection of sounds into a mesmerising aural tapestry.” Fifteen Questions
“I think this is some of the best work from Madeleine Cocolas….. the way she has brought all the pieces together….is masterful” Peter Hollo, Utility Fog
“Listening to "Syndesis" is a little like standing at the Lion Gate and realizing the roar you hear is partly the past, partly your own breath, and partly the music that rises when the two converge.” Vito Camarretta, Chain D.L.K.
“Not only is each sound perfectly crafted and placed exactly where they need to be, the result is nothing short of breathtaking.” Mark Hjorthoy, CITR Discorder Magazine
“Few albums manage to offer such a wide range of atmospheres and emotions while still maintaining a cohesive, unified feel.” Richard Skelton, Ambient Blog
“This is music as homecoming, where field recordings don’t document place so much as resurrect the emotions that places hold, creating space for the listener to trace their own invisible maps.” Foxy Digitalis
Powerful field work recoding woven into neo-classical academicism and experimentation. Marvin
“This is an expansive and beautiful ambient record. It blows in like space dust and then builds impressively…. It’s a lovely piece of sonic art” Listening Habit
“[Syndesis’ ] is tinged with a kind of melancholy nostalgia, as though Cocolas is both imbibing the magic of her surroundings and longing to connect with ancestors whose lives have been swept away by the sands of time.” Shawn Reynaldo,First Floor
“'Syndesis' is a collection of bespoke field recordings, synthesizer swells and cinematic piano motifs from Aussie sound artist and Room40 regular Madeleine Cocolas” Boomkat
“rich ambient drone pieces, whose simple comprehensibility deceives over the inner complexity” Frank P. Eckert, Groove
BODIES
“an expansive suite of pieces evoking the mysterious, overwhelming posers of bodies of water - oceans, rivers, creeks - things that can wash over and through us” - Leah Kardos, The Wire
“Australian musician Madeleine Cocolas has a strong knack for emotionally complex soundscaping” [Best Ambient Music on Bandcamp, April 2024] Ted Davis, Bandcamp
“Cocolas lavishes concealed chorals and orchestral waves of powerful, distorted electronics” Boomkat
“To my ears, that is what makes Madeleine Cocolas’s work feel like something special and singular: her genius for weaving together richly detailed layers of continually evolving field recordings, processed voices, and electronic instruments into a seamless organic fantasia.” Anthony D’Amico, Brainwashed
“a potent record ... Cocolas seems to be at her best when she’s navigating turbulent waters, her music’s serrated currents threatening to capsize the boat at any moment “ Shawn Reynaldo, First Floor
“Cocolas is one of those musicians who instils a real sense of place in her compositions and allows us to find ourselves within those spaces. That’s why her music is so distinctively moving.” - John Parry, Backseat Mafia
“Cocolas experiments with water, breath and synth, producing altogether new and undefinable Bodies” - Richard Allen, A Closer Listen
“The whole thing is condensed into a cohesive sound stream, in which pulsating oscillations and currents of liquid noise are gradually diluted in the dark waves of an imaginary ocean, in which to IMMERSE.” Raffaello Russo, Rockerilla
“With Madeleine Cocolas, bodies of the waters and human bodies get married to create music of enlightened beauty, with visionary flares. MAGNIFICENT!” Dionys, Inactuelles
Spectral
“a vibrant array of vocals and electronics…she uses her recordings as a jumping-off point for her pensive music, swirling doleful piano and electronics into an expansive, nostalgic sound.” - Vanessa Ague, Pitchfork
“Cocolas patiently burrows through the surface of the mundane and familiar, slowing down time and creating deep space to observe the transient beauty of fading and emerging moments. It’s gorgeous stuff.” - Leah Kardos, The Wire
[Bandcamp Album of the Day] & [Bandcamp Best Experimental Music: July 2022] - “Existing at the intersection of subjectivity and intention, Spectral is a mesmerizing exploration of stillness, perception, and memory.” - Ted Davis, Bandcamp
“With Spectral, Cocolas again shows her mastery of powerfully restrained composition” - Electronic Sound
“A beautiful and restrained album of gentle piano melodies and evocative ambience.” Boomkat
“easily one of the year’s finest ambient full-lengths…. undeniably hypnotic… a compelling listen” - Shawn Reynaldo, First Floor
“a gorgeous new work….a musical narrative, expressing deep emotions through the sounds of industrial machinery, swarms of crickets and huge storms, combined with Cocolas' sensitive keyboards and piano” Peter Hollo, FBI Radio
[2022 Top Ten Modern Composition] “Her unique alchemical blend of post classical and ambient music is really something quite special… Her compositions are endlessly fascinating, highly experimental, deeply calming, and at times transcendent.” - Cyclic Defrost
“Spectral is a powerful and subtle contemplation on place… [it] is a beautiful document of Madeleine Cocolas’ own explorations and struggles, and as such it can help us to find our own way.” - A Closer Listen
“Cocolas has an unparalleled ability to distill complex emotions into remarkable, engaging soundscapes, and Spectral is among her best. A beautiful, poignant album.” - Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis
“On Spectral, the devil is in the detail, and what the listener is gifted with is a deeply transformative experience from one human being, their documentation and experience of the world at a moment in time, to another” - Tristan Birrell, 4ZZZ
“ What Brisbane-based composer and musician Madeleine Cocolas forged by combining a set of sounds she grabbed by her phone from the surroundings of her dwelling is simply amazing and considerably touching if you can reasonably say you preserved your soul in these hard times.” Chaindlk
“A Perfect and varied album of soundscapes that invite you to stay aware of your surroundings.” Ambientblog
“Cocolas explores a world of timeless, calm and beautifully washed out Ambient goodness from the very first moments of the opener” Baze Djunkii, Nitestylez
“Madeleine has sculptured the sounds so they never stay still, yet they evoke an inner stillness. The track is relaxing and meditative but emotionally expressive and that’s a difficult balance to achieve.” - Higher Plain Music
“Outrageously beautiful” - Groove Magazine
“Subtle and glorious” - Boomkat
“Pure Class” - Gonzo Circus
“Superb” - Roland Torres, Silence and Sound
Ithaca
Featured in NPR Music’s No. 1 Albums of May 2020 - All Songs Considered, NPR Music
TOP 10 MODERN COMPOSITIONS 2020 - A Closer Listen
2020 IN REVIEW: MODERN CLASSICAL - Stationary Travels
BEST AMBIENT OF 2020: Honorable Mention - Post Ambient Lux
BEST OF 2020 QUIET SPACE TOP 100 COUNTDOWN - PIMPOD (Number 8)
THE MODERNS 2020 FAVOURITES - The Moderns
BEST of 2020 - Cyclic Defrost
“Ithaca’s intense atmospherics might overwhelm your senses, flood your listening environment and transport you somewhere else if you let it” - Leah Kardos, The Wire
“Able to summon tender melodies from a solo piano or spin up a kaleidoscopic storm of electronic sounds, Ithaca traverses a dazzling range of tones, textures, moods, and emotions” - Brian Housman, Stationary Travels
“Ithaca, her third album is so lush and controlled. It is a thing of beauty.” - Bob Baker Fish, Cyclic Defrost
“You will feel this album deeply” - Kevin Press, The Moderns
“The always exciting Madeleine Cocolas is back with a new full-length, Ithaca (Room40), filled with percolating, emotional music.” - Marc Weidenbaum, Disquiet
“Ithaca is a tranquil, expansive phantom. It is more than just a place, it is also a web of emotional states and historical traces where the twists of grand myths meet the common patterns of everyday life” - David Murrieta Flores, A Closer Listen
“It's an album… ultimately of hope.” - Peter Hollo, Utility Fog
“An authentic and heartfelt album” - Mario Ariano, Radioaktiv
“Ithaca is a minimal/ambient album that carries a lot of weight.” - Sound As Language
“A majestic piece of music. [A Basic Understanding’s] tangible sense of awe and wonder feels especially moving.” - Shawn Reynaldo, First Floor
Metropolitan
I wanted to write an album connected to her time in New York City. After falling in love with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I decided to write an album about The Met, and specifically about nine individual artworks from The Met that resonated with me.
Using custom software to analyze the nine different artworks, I incorporated sounds generated by the software into my compositions and wove them together with pianos, synthesizers and vocals. The resulting album is a collection of connected yet varied works that range from delicate piano pieces, to lush soundscapes and pulsating synthesizers.
CASCADIA
Cascadia is a distillation of a project called “52 Weeks” whereby I wrote a piece of music every week for a year. I had just moved to Seattle from Melbourne and was feeling disconnected and isolated, and this project gave me a sense of purpose and outlet for musical projects. It is ultimately my love letter to living in the Seattle and the Cascade region.
