“Himalayan Tea”, the lush, ambient roller from Munich-based artist Panic Girl, opens the door to a world where the ordinary meets the ethereal. The effect is something like magical realism: On “Morning Coffee in Tokyo,” snippets of urban ambience—like the sound of a train in motion, laughter, coughing, and the clinking of dishes—blend with hypnotic percussion and fairytale synths; the faint chatter murmuring in the background of “Moonbase” ground its cosmic arpeggios in earthy tones.
Some of this duality can be chalked up to Panic Girl’s background: she was classically trained in piano, guitar, and voice before she turned her attention to electronic music. The album’s artwork—a photograph of a Eurorack synth surrounded by an assortment of candles and plants—offers another combination of organic and synthetic. Panic Girl’s music is homey and comforting, from the wind that blows gently through “Windwalker” to the candy-coated vocals that wrap themselves around the Morcheeba-esque title track. As its title implies, Cake on Jupiter is a journey through the cosmos that keeps one eye trained on earth.