Artist: Dhyamara
Title: The last Embrace
Genre: Electro-Wave-Pop
Release Date: 21st January 2011
Label: Caput-Medusae-Records
Album Review
Even if Italy isn’t coercively the first association if it’s about spherical, dreamlike soundscapes full of melancholy, vastness and enchantment (apart from some exceptions of course!), so is it exactly that mood, what is unfolded in a very pleasant and atmospheric way on the debut album ‘The last Embrace’ by the duo from the southern part of Europe.
Despite their overriding electronic arrangements, the eleven songs manage to convey a comfortably warmness, a feeling of weightlessness and acoustical boundlessness, what is for large parts due to the remarkable voice of singer Ninfa, what moves somewhere between QNTAL and KIRLIAN CAMERA (also influences stated by the band) and is the albums Ariadne´s thread, the bridge from 80´s synth-pop to ethereal dream-pop and slightly shades of Darkwave. Yet the opening track ‘In The Night Of The Ancient Spirit’ indicates the way the album is going to take. Spherical and gentle keyboards are hovering over subdued beats and rhythms, spread out like wind under electronic sparkling stars, among whose the vocals seem to expand time and space. The singularity of Ninfa´s voice especially gets clear in the song ‘My lost Angel’, a track, that signifies the more danceable side of the album and becomes something like a stylistic antithesis of the opener.
But not only this kind of beguiling positive brightness leaves marks on ‘The last Embrace’, so we have the song ‘Moonlight’, which is characterized by a cadenced coldness and a mystical obscurity, in what the ethnical touched vocals weave a mist-like veil of spirituality and timelessness. So like the piano-guided ‘The Meaning of Silence’, that filigree and fragilely like a glitter on the sea develops its daunting beauty. And this is one of the great skills of the album and the band, that they manage to keep that ocean-like mood through the whole bunch of songs, which sometimes soughing breaks on the shore (‘Now in my Eyes’, ‘Ghost in a Dream’) and sometimes quietly and motionlessly acts as an emotional mirror (‘Luna Errante’, ‘For Elise’).
And so ‘The last Embrace’ is an album for the principally calm moments, a refuge from the rush and restlessness of the time by itself, in which only the acoustic colours sometimes seem to cold and edged, appear to derange, to add to much gravity to the wings of singer Ninfa´s heavenly voice.
Tracklist
01. In The Night Of The Ancient Spirit
02. My Lost Angel
03. Witness Of Your Fear
04. Moonlight
05. The Meaning Of Silence
06. Now In My Eyes
07. Luna Errante
08. Namarie
09. Ghost In A Dream
10. To Elise
11. The Last Embrace
Line-up
Ninfa - Vocals, Lyrics
Luka - Bass, Keyboards, Arrangements
Website
www.myspace.com/dhyamara
Cover Picture
Rating
Music: 7
Sound: 9
Total: 8 / 10
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