"Some Kinda Way" is a record about taking the long route to yourself and then deciding that the detours were the point all along. Connor D’Netto doesn’t dramatize this process, which is refreshing, because the story behind the music already carries enough weight. Instead, he lets sound do the talking, looping, circling, occasionally stalling, and then moving forward again with a slightly crooked grin.

D’Netto is an Australian composer whose work often sits in that fertile overlap between contemporary composition and lived experience, where structure exists but never quite behaves. The pieces here revolve around saturation as both technique and metaphor. Instruments are layered until they stop feeling singular and start behaving like environments. Clarinet lines blur into themselves. The viola da gamba, already an instrument with a stubbornly physical presence, is stretched through delays and loops until it feels less historical and more bodily, almost vocal.

The title piece, split into three parts, takes a familiar minimalist premise and quietly undermines it. Yes, there’s an echo of Reich’s "New York Counterpoint" in the setup, but "Some Kinda Way" isn’t about urban propulsion or crisp geometry. It’s softer around the edges, more hesitant, more human. Musical ideas that once didn’t fit anywhere are dragged back into the light and given room to breathe. You can hear things being tested, reconsidered, accepted late but sincerely. The music doesn’t rush to justify itself. It lingers, like someone rereading old messages with new eyes.

The framing pieces, with titles nodding to tattoos, nails, piercings, function less as transitions and more as thresholds. They mark moments of decision, of marking the body or the self, quietly acknowledging that permanence and vulnerability often arrive together. "Feeling More Like", originally written earlier and revisited here, feels like the emotional core of the album. It revels in the viola da gamba’s quirks, not smoothing them out but amplifying them, as if to say that awkwardness can be a source of warmth rather than embarrassment.

There’s something gently funny about how earnest this record is without tipping into self-importance. It doesn’t ask for applause. It doesn’t posture. Even when the textures grow dense, the mood remains open, almost generous. Lawrence English’s mastering keeps everything tactile and close, preserving the sense that these sounds are being shaped by hands, breath, and patience rather than algorithms.

"Some Kinda Way" is not a coming-out record in the obvious sense. It’s closer to a reclamation ritual, built from leftovers, second thoughts, and ideas that once seemed inconvenient. The result is music that doesn’t insist on resolution. It suggests that becoming yourself is rarely a clean arc. It’s more like layering delays until the sound finally feels like home.