About six months ago, Sufjan Stevens released the sweeping, ambitious album Ascension. Two days after its release, Stevens’ biological father died. In response, Stevens started working on a massive, overwhelming new project called Convocations. That project swiftly took on extreme dimensions. Next month, Stevens will release Convocations as a five-volume album. It’ll include 49 tracks, run for two and a half hours, and explore the five stages of grief.

Convocations includes five volumes: Meditations, Lamentations, Revelations, Celebrations, and Incantations. Meditations, the first volume, is coming out on Thursday. Stevens will release one volume of the album per week, and the entire thing will be out early in May. Today, Stevens has shared a track called “Meditation V.” It’s a soft, sad two-minute ambient track. The track has no words. Instead, it has electronic drones and disquieted strings.

Stevens wrote, produced, recorded, and mixed every track on Convocations by himself. His Bandcamp page asserts that Convocations is not a side project and that it’s “by no means an ambient enterprise,” though it invokes influences like Brian Eno, Christian Fennesz, and Wolfgang Voigt. It’s clear that Stevens views this as a personal project and as a major one. Listen to “Meditation V” below.

Convocations is out in full 5/6 on Asthmatic Kitty. Meditations, the first volume, will be out in two days, and you’ll be able to stream it here.