Category Archives: Reviews > Music

On the Death of David Bowie

There’s “pass­ing away with style,” and then there’s “I’m going for one more encore, and I’m not just going to love this, I’m gonna strike the bold­est dot imag­in­able on the excla­ma­tion point that is my life.”

When I heard about David Bowie’s death, I part­ly expect­ed to hear about him doing some­thing notable or dra­mat­ic on the way out — ain’t that just like him.

The end is near, the odds are tan­gi­bly impos­si­ble, and even as the world comes crash­ing down around his ears, here he is on set cast­ing a music video, singing with that same sweet, sil­very pas­sion that’s defined so many of his life’s oth­er accomplishments.

Not florid prose nor mourn­ful dis­course nor sim­ple won­der can prop­er­ly describe the inspi­ra­tion and beau­ty in such a ges­ture. Lyrics here. Links to the Cana­di­an and Amer­i­can Can­cer Soci­eties as well, because why not con­tribute?

Now, if you haven’t clicked PLAY on the above video, you’d bet­ter turn off every­thing else around you right now, and load it up.

And don’t for­get the encore …

May you be well remem­bered, and remem­bered well in all the ages to come.

Auditory Flashbacks: Helium Vola

For those who haven’t heard of them before, today’s post is going to give some exam­ples of the amaz­ing work that’s been cre­at­ed over the years by Heli­um Vola. Based in Ger­many, active since 2001, and head­ed up by com­pos­er Ernst Horn who also holds con­sid­er­able renown for his oth­er work under Deine Lakaien and Qntal, Heli­um Vola mix­es the haunt­ing into­na­tions of numer­ous dead lan­guages with the effer­ves­cent melodies of its ongo­ing elec­tron­ic, neo-medieval, and neo-clas­si­cal explorations.

While the over­all atmos­phere of most of their work is marked­ly ethe­re­al in nature and has long found its great­est strengths in that style, it has­n’t stopped the band from branch­ing out in oth­er ways, as can eas­i­ly be noticed over time. This has result­ed in cer­tain tracks giv­ing an utter­ly chaot­ic feel­ing at times, peri­od­i­cal­ly laps­ing into wide vari­a­tions of melody and tem­po, pro­duc­ing rather unex­pect­ed results that can tend to be a strong hit or miss to the lis­ten­er. This is more preva­lent in their recent albums than the old­er ones, seem­ing to come and go at whim on cer­tain tracks, sug­gest­ing both an ongo­ing, ephemer­al sort of exper­i­men­ta­tion, and per­haps unex­pect­ed­ly tap­ping into a lis­ten­er’s more vis­cer­al reac­tion. There are times one won­ders what’s sud­den­ly tran­spired, when all of a sud­den the song weaves back into its orig­i­nal tone and tem­po, that much stronger for the juxtaposition.

This is some­thing that’s high­ly sub­jec­tive, to say the least. You’ll have to lis­ten for your­self and decide.

Also, while Heli­um Vola’s work tends not to be first thing that springs to mind when­ev­er one thinks of the word ‘dance,’ the raw, organ­ic, flu­id emo­tions expressed in these songs and their qui­et­ly rest­less rhythms bring a spe­cial con­tri­bu­tion to the table, and when one is immersed in the soar­ing vocals and flut­ter­ing tones of cer­tain songs, it’s not long before one feels the sen­su­al wisps of temp­ta­tion pulling at the mind to sway and drift in uni­son, to speak melody through motion, to aspire to dreams that fly as high.

On a per­son­al lev­el, I’ve found this a very rare expe­ri­ence to dis­cov­er in any musi­cal artist, and I find myself wish­ing we had some­thing — any­thing — like it in Cana­da. Along­side bands like Qntal, Atarax­ia, and oth­ers (who will be dis­cussed in future posts), I’ve noticed HV falls into a very spe­cif­ic niche even with­in the goth­ic sub­cul­ture where their par­tic­u­lar style seems much more wide­ly rec­og­nized. I find it odd they’re not more well known giv­en the obvi­ous­ly dark direc­tion in which their music leans, but either way, it does­n’t real­ly mat­ter so much as the fact I feel bet­ter off for hav­ing expe­ri­enced their work, and I’d like to offer the same to my read­ers. It took years of explor­ing before I found them, and that was large­ly by accident.

With­out fur­ther ado, let us take a brief jour­ney through time.

Con­tin­ue read­ing