Bluesanct
Caethua : Village Of The Damned (US,2007)***°
Bluesanct label found in Caethua a likewise "poor soul" underground folk & experimental music talent in Caethua, and re-released her privately released project, to reach a bigger audience, as a home printed booklet, with CDR, while the (real cd?) pressings on her own label, Saxwand, will still remain available.
I assume this is mostly a female led project of songs combined with additional soundscapes, that unfolds like abstract natural sounds, partly meditative with bowls and droning keyboards.
On “Retreat” this sounds like as if objects that stand in a room with closed curtains so long so that they become so familiar and it becomes so as if they begin to speak with sounds, while Caethua sings in this environment, as the ghost, guides over their familiar stagnant and safe patterns. On “Playing dead” (I saw the title only after the previous description) the voice is much more alive over the dead, more playful, still behind curtains, while also guitars arrangements are added. “Meditation” uses Tibetan bells and keyboards, and is indeed a meditative soundtrack, rich in colours with sounds, an existence in a grey darkness and nature, as a naturally evolving soundscape. Also “they walk at night” with voice, bells, guitar and so on, forms thoroughly another kind of naturally pulsing soundtrack, sounding like industrial insects, until thoroughly a keyboard drones take it over, with slow waves and slightly buzzing sounds to it, like a combination of radiowaves of longer and shorter wavelength frequencies. After more musings with guitars and keyboards and hand and finger percussive inspirations in a room, “black water” concludes with a "woohoo.." singing, like the dog in the house who found as if through chanelling a human voice for its expressions….
Caethua explained to me afterwards : "The CD is about the village where I grew up called Dryden, where a long string of murders (dating back to when the village was founded) cursed the land." Caethea also just released another recording on LP.
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