Camera Obscura Rec.
Marianne Nowotny : Illusions of the Sun (US,2002)*°'
When I read other reviews I cannot believe my eyes how directly positive the reviewers are and how many references they bring in, upto a ridiculous point. Of course we have to be serious with music, but what, when the music itself has something "absurd"/outside the category of "normal music" ? Do we still have to compare then with very serious examples ? Hell no ! This is indeed a very original approach, but so are many more examples of the 'incredibly strange music' subgenre, -which I often prefer to call the 'idiotsyncratic' genre-. Whether you like this subgenre or not is up to you. Now, I do like it, with a certain reserved amount of non-seriousness. This non seriousness doesn't have to be 'humour'. The music has to be "big" enough yet not to fit the usual serious music, and has to be created seriously enough, in a very individual world strange expression of a certain genially autism. And wow what a strange world the 17 year old Marianne Nowtonny brings, on small keyboards and with her voice only. On "Illusions of the sun", she recalls a bit the Japanese Jon : going from a melodic normal song approach towards oddities going around the song ideas, falling of, and then again back to norma
l.
It's not esoteric, only odd at first, it's just her own world, -still anybody's world. "Rainy Days and vinyl" continues expressing a strange world, surreal, like the early contemporary "Pierrot Lunaire" was, from Arnold Schönberg (-a very poetic work by the way, often misinterpreted as being a technical work only-). All oddities in singing mentioned she does this with full confidence. The last track "Sweet and Low" with harmonium, sounds like Om khalsoum on acid, and leaves me strangely enough as well with a desire for more.
What puzzled me at first, after a while got me hooked, was as if the music was the purest, and most dangerous, acid. While at first listen I was thrown out of my chair, listening further whilst wrecked on the carpet, I enjoyed the music at second listen as a cocktail of colourful delightful island, of oddities in my head.
Is this a recommended release ? Not if you expect just anything, but yes if you are open to a pleasant unexpectedness (and when you like 'Outsider Art' for instance).
