Artist: Ever Orchid
Title: Dryad Anthousai
Type: Album
Label: Fire Line Records
“Dryads are elementals of the trees and Anthousai are elementals from the flowers” states Ever, thankfully clearing up the first question I had about this album. I reviewed the last EP by Ever Orchid and this is actually her third studio album. I did not know quite what to expect here and probably if I had a notion it would have been wrong. So how to describe this? It’s not actually an easy task. First I would say that this is very minimalist and it is also incredibly calming and gentle, so probably not for everyone who visits this site. Although divided into 11 tracks (all with very intriguing names) this flows from one to the next, sometime with just very subtle background noise dividing things. It is all based around Ever’s voice and she is obviously very confident and has to have a very strong presence in order to carry things off as often any instruments are as such seemingly included as an afterthought. For instance on ‘Cassiopeia’ you can only just make something out quietly in the background until a gentle hand drums a light rhythm on what very probably is some kind of ancestral drum. Also you may hear what filmmakers describe as stock footage, the call of tropical birds, the sigh of the sea or whale song.
In a word this is ‘ethereal’, incredibly natural sounding mood music. It kind of has an almost pagan delight to it, I would not have been surprised if Ever had upped the ante and suddenly burst into covering something from The Wicker Man which no doubt would be a delight to hear but probably not on this album. The only artist that I have remotely similar to this is Nebelhexe and that is high praise, perhaps you could vaguely name-drop the likes of say This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance into the mix as well but only fleetingly as this is highly original to my ears. There is some gorgeous piano melody about ‘Memories From The Akasha’ (look it up) whereas the airy and light vocal fluttering of ‘Dragonfly Lullaby’ is very much at one with the fairies and you can almost feel the breath of the elements touching you as wind and water are very subtle in the background, or are they, perhaps I am just hearing things? Any attempts I could make to describe things are surplus to requirements as I have just discovered explanations to all the songs in Ever’s MySpace blog which you can check out along with some of the songs.
At times this feels deeply spiritual and ritualistic and it is obvious that Ever is very much in tune with what she is doing, this spills out of the music and envelopes the listener adding depths that with concentration are richly rewarding. I feel like I have perhaps scratched the surface here and have opened a box which may well unveil more mysteries in time; put simply this is a beautiful, beguiling and spellbinding album.
http://www.myspace.com/everorchid
