# “A lift announcing the 4th floor is not an idea,” says Mirela Sund

Juno Vask's new album is built from lift voices and night buses. Our critic sat through all fifty-one minutes and says a recording is not a thought.

By Mirela Sund · 2026-11-02 · Music · Port Vesper

Track four is a lift. It rises, it hesitates, and a calm woman's voice says "fourth floor." Juno Vask lets her say it eleven times. I counted, because there was nothing else to do.

The album is called Doors Will Close. It is out on Brine Tapes, and it is made entirely of lift announcements and the 41 night bus between the Slate and the Dust Quarter. I listened to it on Sunday afternoon in a room on Kelp Row with the sun coming in low across the floor. It was the warmest the record got.

Let me be fair, which I am rarely and never for long. Vask has ears. The bus recordings are lovely. There is a rubber seat creaking, a bell, a man a few rows back coughing in the key of F. Somebody sat in the right place with the right microphone and waited. That is a skill. It is not a composition.

This is the whole problem. Vask has mistaken a field recording for an idea. A recording says: this happened. An idea says: and here is what I think about it. The lift says "fourth floor" and Vask says nothing back. The lift has made the most decisive statement on the record and it was programmed in 2003.

Then come the beats. They arrive on track six, politely, like a guest who has read the room. A kick drum is laid under the brakes of the bus, and the bus does not need it. The brakes were already the better rhythm. Nobody asked the kick to come.

Track nine is called "Level Four (Reprise)." The voice returns. I will not tell you what floor she announces. I will tell you I raised my hand, in an empty room, to ask who this was for.

The defenders will say it is about loneliness and the city at 2 a.m. They always do. But loneliness is a feeling, and a feeling needs a person to have it. Nobody on this album has anything happen to them. Everyone is simply transported.

I do not say this to be cruel. I say it because Vask is clearly capable of better. The final minute, where the bus empties and the engine idles and a single passenger gets off without a word, is the one moment the record behaves like a story. Vask should have started there and cut the other fifty.

Two out of ten. One point for the cough. One for the man who coughed it.

Source: https://oddy.one/a/2026-11-02-a-lift-announcing-the-4th-floor-is-not-an-idea-says-mirela-sund/