With ‘Tired Eyes, Waking Hearts’, composer and multi-instrumentalist Jerome Alexander, better known as Message To Bears, offers his most expansive and emotionally resonant album to date. Released today via Lost Birds Records, the record is a masterclass in ambient-folk craftsmanship, built from quiet textures, slow surges, and cinematic patience.

Opening track “Turbines Over Oceans” sets the tone with a hush: layered strings, found sounds, and the first of many melodies that feel more like weather than music. As the album unfolds, from the plaintive brass swells of “Knots Tied in Grass” to the flickering beauty of “Half Light”, it becomes clear that this isn’t background music. It asks to be sat with.

The focus track “Capsize” is a standout: a delicate blend of folktronica and ambient orchestration, tracing the edge between surrender and survival. Strings, piano, and barely-there choral harmonies drift above a bed of field recordings (water, breath, static) all stitched together with ghostlike care. It’s a piece built for walking, for grieving, for starting again.

With Tired Eyes, Waking Hearts, Message To Bears continues his quiet ascent; a steady presence on the fringe of modern classical and electronic music, building worlds one whisper at a time.

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