Tag Archives: ethereal gothic

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

Auditory Flashbacks: This Ascension

It is present­ly five o’clock in the morn­ing, and I just arrived home from work.

Along the way, I was hit with a real­iza­tion, the same one I’ve had many a time but nev­er real­ly shared here before: fin­ish­ing these late shifts always ends with a real­ly qui­et ride home, and it’s some­thing I’ve grown to appre­ci­ate. It feels like cycling through a dead city after the zom­bie apoc­a­lypse has come and gone, with not a soul in sight unless you count wildlife, and even that tends to be pret­ty iso­lat­ed and sparse in the three-to-five win­dow of time.

Actu­al­ly, I love it. The world just seems like it’s tee­ter­ing on the brink of some­thing amaz­ing at moments like those, so full of qui­et pos­si­bil­i­ties, so very ready to burst forth into a flur­ry of life and motion.

In the spir­it of that soli­tude, here’s a blast from the past from a band who (sad­ly) isn’t togeth­er any longer but whose mem­o­ries and glo­ri­ous sound will always cast a com­fort­able shad­ow in these halls … This Ascension!

And you’ve got to admit, there’s hard­ly a bet­ter sound to accom­pa­ny a sink­ing cres­cent moon and indi­go skies.

For­ev­er Shak­en ( +lyrics ):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgnTlSItujk

Angel Light: