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Artist: Lena P: 2007 LTD 300 This is the recording debut of a multi-instrumentalist new to the ambient & experimental music scenes. Alchemy of Fingers and Dark is a budget-priced single in CDR format, featuring 2 tracks from Lena's upcoming Hypnos Secret Sounds album Extended Gestures For Cello (as well as 4 remixes bringing the total running time to over 70 minutes). As indicated by the album's title, these recordings are entirely made up of solo cello, with electronic treatments and production by Hypnos founder and ambient experimentalist, M. Griffin. The album Extended Gestures For Cello features solo cello, performed live in studio by Lena, with sound treatments by M. Griffin. The resultant sound is somewhere between recognizably cello-like traditional, and an edgier, more atmospheric, and more challenging tone. The first two remixes extend and deepen and thicken the atmosphere, the Austere demix is an interesting experiment in many shifting, chorusing layers, and the final demix by The Mystifying Oracle takes greater liberties with the original, building upon the cello notes, adding strange voice samples and freakiness, off-kilter beats, more voice samples, more freakiness, and more beats. Lots of fun, and over 70 minutes of music in all, for $5.99... hard to beat, so we hope many listeners will give this one a go.
Artist: Lena P: 2007 This CD from 2007 features 70 minutes of ambient de constructions of music from Lena's "Extended Gestures for Cello" album. Lena plays acoustic cello. Taking turns at the demix board are: M. Griffin, Austere, and the Mystifying Oracle. Cello is as cello does: sawing expressions of terse vibrations usually found at the bottom of classical recitals. Here, however, those dark notes are subjected to contemporary electronic treatments, infusing the drones with unearthly character and spectral verve. Ghostly passages grip the audience's attention, digging deep into the psyche and opening receptivity to each nuance and trembling oscillation. While already steeped in a moody atmosphere, the processing bestow a bedeviling edge to the cello strains. Tantalizing phantoms are conjured and goaded to wander the mix. The title track is a 24 minute epic of haunting substance, riddled with ethereal echoes and perilous predilection. At times, the electronics threaten to overwhelm the source material, transforming string expressions into piercingly shrill outcries of alien sound. The Austere-demixed piece ferments with a vitality that is quite extraterrestrial. The Mystifying Oracle injects spooky voices to the mix, punctuating the eerie flow with chittering diodes and thumping percussion until the piece swells into an analogy of a techno song. Compositionally, the basic music is harmonious and minimal. The treatments breathe a haunting mien to those chords, driving the end result far from any concert hall and plunging the pieces into a realm of modern sensibilities. Matt Howarth / Sonic Curiosity
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