Ricardo Ballestero - Chosen Eyes (Les Yeux Elus) - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

The sinister yet beguiling images that DARKHER aka Jayn Maiven paints with her ethereal vocals, guitars, and added strings conjure iridescent cinematic scenes in which it becomes hard to tell whether there lies beauty in darkness or if it is the other way around. With her sophomore full-length InchThe Buried StormInch, the guitarist, composer, lyricist, and producer has clearly succeeded to even improve the beloved alchemic musical formula that was firmly established on DARKHER's debut album InchRealmsInch in 2016. DARKHER were conceived as the sole brainchild and solo-project of Northern English singer and guitarist Jayn Maiven in 2012. The dark and melancholic yet also massively heavy sound on the self-titled debut EP InchDarkherInch 2013) combined with the distinct vocals of the shy pre-Raphaelite beauty caused an audible buzz - particularly in the doom scene and led to the following EP InchThe Kingdom FieldInch (2014) appearing via Prophecy Productions. Despite not even having an album out, DARKHER were invited to prestigious festivals such as Roadburn in Tilburg, The Netherlands and Prophecy Fest in the Cave of Balve. In 2016, the debut full-length InchRealmsInch was released to much praise from critics and fans alike. Press compared DARKHER's music with a wide range of highly individual acts such as CHELSEA WOLFE, ESBEN AND THE WITCH, SOLSTAFIR, LOREENA MCKENNITT, and PORTISHEAD. InchThe Buried StormInch gives shape to the darkness lurking at the edge of consciousness, hidden from plain sight but patiently biding it's time to strike out at the heart.

Acclaimed for it's 'rhythmic verve, spontaneity and riot of splendid colors' (Pizzicato magazine on Giovanni Picchi's Canzoni da Sonar con ogni sorte d'istromenti), Concerto Scirocco now immerses itself in the English musical scene of the Elizabethan era, and more especially the genres of the masque and the fantasia. Great cultural ferment swept through England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The courts invested huge sums of money in the production of 'masques', entertainments combining music, dance, theatre and stage design in a sumptuous display of grandeur. At the same time, the first public playhouses were founded in the suburban districts of London The Theatre, the Red Lion, the Rose, the Swan, and in 1599 Shakespeare's Globe. Music played a key role in accompanying this eccentric burst of cultural vitality the asymmetrical fantasias of John Hilton, the monumental canzonas and pavanes of William Brade, the impudent, rhetorical masques of Robert Johnson and others, reveal an era of unparalleled musical invention and exploration.

Graindelavoix - Ossuaires [COMPACT DISCS] date 11/27/2012