Leather and Lace, Salt and Sound: Inside Rocco Gibson’s “Rose Quartz”
- Strunkiss Music
- Jul 24
- 2 min read
A lush, surreal instrumental journey through the odd, the life’s ordinary, and the intimate of a rising independent artist.
Today we have the pleasure of reviewing Rose Quartz, the new instrumental album by composer-producer and artist Rocco Gibson. Across thirteen tracks, Gibson paints vignettes of modern life using minimalism, off-kilter textures, and sly emotional cues. There are no vocals, just moods, movements, memories and a whole lotta cooking.
Rose Quartz is full of curious sounds and unexpected landscapes. It’s an album with no cultural boundaries, gliding through bossa nova, techno, EDM, jazz, sometimes all at once. It feels like a fine chef’s spice cabinet: diverse, intentional, and fearless in its combinations. Nothing is off limits, yet everything is perfectly balanced in a course of songs that will leave you hungry for more.
Let’s talk standouts. “Leather Suspenders” is an opener that sets the tone: woozy synths, tape hiss, catchy drums and restraint. It’s a strut in slow motion.
“Strawberry Seltzer” bubbles like its name sake playful, sweet, almost fizzy. “Shepherd’s Pie” anchors the album in domestic nostalgia, all warm keys and kitchen-sink clatter.
But Gibson isn’t afraid to get risky. “Mushroom Coffee” and “Jail Wine” are both hazy interludes with unsettling undertones, like dreams you forget until they creep back mid-afternoon after a nap. “Guanciale E Pancetta” somehow manages to feel like a cooking show for a recipe you must try.
“Judith’s Garden” might be the emotional center, soft, reflective, and yet patient. And the title track, “Rose Quartz,” closes the album like an open ending, unfinished thoughts suspended in pastel tones.
In a world where independent artists can barely have time to eat, many fall into a spiral so obsessed with the mechanics of creation, the metrics, the hustle, that they live in constant anxiety about failure. They forget that creation is also escape, a form of liberation from the very pressure that haunts them. Rocco Gibson doesn’t seem to suffer from this affliction. He transcends it. Rose Quartz plays like a cooking and eating show for the soul, each track a dish prepared without fear, without urgency, just the joy of flavor, texture, and timing.
This isn’t just instrumental music. It’s memory music, music that remembers there’s so much more to the struggle of becoming a successful artist. There’s the daily life made of quiet joys, like a warm dish with exotic, unexpected spices you cooked. Every track on Rose Quartz feels like a photo you found in someone else’s drawer, familiar, not yours, and yet a deep dive into the artist’s inspiring life.
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