While getting off the planet usually require tons of machinery, those of us guided by Jonn Serrie will only need his album Elysian Lightships (38'45"). Its six tracks, each a spellbinding symphony of cosmic ideas, radiate a blissful skillful coolness. Its subtle shifts in tone generate a restless energy, creating a distinctive atmosphere of synth-wrought textures and nebula dreams. This inspired music is luminous and graceful, polished and refined, mystical and critical, as it quietly stirs wanderers in a splendor of expression. Like a meteor making for a lost star, or a probe traveling through darkness Elysian Lightships uses its duration to search. Whenever thoughts quietly burn, chilled currents pull us beyond the control of known forces. Electronic tones emerge, fuse and resound - rumbling beneath galactic reverberation. As slow melodies trek to harmonious concord, chords extend outward, and listeners are pulled through the shadows into light. Where poetic ideas suggest a scene, sonic intrigue creates a mood, and the spacetime continuum is strikingly transformed. Eluding superficial thought for a direct connection to the essential realm within Elysian Lightships reaffirms this veteran celestial navigator's singular ability to transform our listening place into the furthest reaches of space. With all bearings erased Serrie's decades-long journey into sound resumes here in a beautifully flowing and transporting drift.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 2 March 2023 |