11 July, 2022

Aurora borealis, the icy sky at night


This entry is something of a follow-up to my encomium for "Island in the Darkness" by Tony Banks as I discovered the music of Daria Shakhova shortly after I had compiled a YouTube playlist of Banks' most flowery, feminine, and/or Romantic songs and found a certain sonic kinship between the two players.

It would probably help if I could read Cyrillic because the internet is lacking in an English language biography of Shakhova. She currently resides in Novosibirsk, Russia and is probably in her late 20s by this point. Her Bandcamp page describes her as a composer and musician who plays the violin, piano, and guitar. She also sings. It goes on to note that she "compose[sic] instrumental music in post minimalist style with progressive shades". I am not sure what this means exactly but her Soundcloud page says she likes to create "instrumental music about [the] most beautiful things on the Earth and [the] human soul".

Shakhova seems to prefer chamber music for her own compositions as everything I've run into involves a string quartet plus her tickling the ivories. 

A couple years ago I read a review of her 2019 album Fluoresense which included the video for "Aurora". I was struck not only by the beauty of the piece but also that it had a vibe similar to that of "Mad Man Moon", a Tony Banks song that he recorded with Genesis. Each song runs about 7 and half minutes and goes through various sections with differing tempos and feels. The piano is at the core of both although one features a full band while the other has a string quartet with piano. Both pieces have a softness to them and then build in emotional intensity before a deft touch puts everything at ease once more.

"Aurora" begins with a gentle piano refrain with the drone of violins behind it. This introductory section quickly yields to one with a faster tempo and all of the instruments contributing to a melody that has a slight tension to it. This gives way to a longer, slower passage which is mainly the strings. Piano returns and gradually picks up the pace until the song reaches its climax. The outro features the same gentle melody as the opening but in a different key.

Fluoresense is about a man fulfilling his dream of wandering the most boreal parts of Scandanavia where he encounters icebergs and the northern lights. This song does a wonderful job of evoking the lights slowly building in intensity until our hero is agog at undulating waves of green and blue that pulse in the night sky.

"Aurora" is a gorgeous song, evocative of natural beauty and human awe before it.


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