Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett collaborate as CV and JAB on this beautiful piece of peaceful piano music – a soothing balm for the pains and frustrations of everyday life.

This perfectly peaceful piano piece will take the tension out of any situation; it should be compulsory listening for anyone under stress. I first heard it on the car radio in a traffic jam and any residual road rage just evaporated under its spell.

Christina Vantzou is an American composer and filmmaker of Greek descent whose music deals with time expansion, atmospheres and harmonies, using electronics, acoustic instruments, field recordings and voice.

John Also Bennett (aka JAB) is an American composer and multi-instrumentalist. Individually, and together, they make music that could be described as avant-garde, atmospheric, or minimalist.

Vantzou says she’s on a mission to bring “breathing space” into her orchestral-meets-electronic soundscapes, explaining: “I’m interested in music that helps produce trance-like states, which have been a part of spiritual practices going back as far as we know.”

I think that’s what they achieve here.

Interestingly, Vantzou first made her name creating video animations for MTV, as well as a music video for the band Interpol, before forming an audio-visual collaboration called The Dead Texan with Adam Wiltzie, from Stars of the Lid – a tragically topical reference as fellow member Brian McBride has just died.

They made a self-titled album in 2004 and later supported Sparklehorse, whose Mark Linkous inspired her to go solo. She has since worked with pianist Dustin O’Halloran and made a series of numbered solo albums, performing concerts with a string quartet when not working as a maths tutor.

This is her latest project, a collaboration with Forma’s John Also Bennett, as “CV & JAB”, which began with an improvised musical interpretation of a 90-meter panoramic wall drawing by French artist Zin Taylor – later becoming an album, Thoughts of a Dot as It Travels a Surface.