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Eve Beuvens: Lysis
ByBoth Cassiers and Heyndels double on electronics. Their ambient bleeps, static hum and crackle are a near constant presence, operating either subliminally or with more assertive atmospheric weight. Coupled with Cassiers' often dreamy delivery, the overall effect is ethereal music that flirts with abstraction. Beuvens' repeating motifs and circular patterns, and Heyndels' spare, lyrical bass provide rhythmic ballast.
With the exception of Dickinson's allegorical "Hope Is the Thing With Feathers," the poems are fairly literal in content and vivid in imagerymaking the contrast with the ambient, sometimes ghostly music all the more striking. Cassiers' delivery on Robert Frost's "Fire and Ice" is so phantasmal as to render the words indistinct, which makes the absence of lyrics in the otherwise attractive CD case seem like a minor misstep. Her diction, by contrast, is crystal clear on the witty "Inventory," and on the aforementioned "Hope... ," where the music swells from sci-fi-esque electronic rumblings to something grandly foreboding, with Beuvens staccato pianism central to the dynamics of darkness and light.
Threaded between the musical adaptations of these poems are five non-lyrical compositionstwo penned by Beuvens, and three co-authored. "Electrolyzed," with its quietly churning electronics and minimalist piano, and "Acidified," a fleeting tableau of bass motif and wordless vocals, are curiously brief affairsakin to musical haikus. Meatier, and more satisfying, is the episodic "Gleis Fünf," where piano, voice and bass converge as one in ascending-descending lines before splintering. Likewise, the leader's agile right-and-left-hand exchanges on "Ionized," over woozy electronics and earthy bass, raise the collective bar.
When the last note fades, the lingering sensations reside principally in the poetrysung and spokenand in their atmospheric framing. In a sense, Frost, Dickinson, Parker and Millay are the stars of the show, and a couple more of their poems might have made for a more conceptually cohesive offering. Still, Beuvens' intimate, artful renditions invite meditation on the world around us and the one withinperhaps chiming with those who seek sense from senselessness and order from chaos.
Track Listing
Fire and Ice; Ionized; Electrolyzed; Hope; Inventory; Acidified; Gleis Fünf; Afternoon on a hill (with Jean); Les enfants endormis; Dust of Snow.
Personnel
Additional Instrumentation
Lynn Cassiers: electronics; Lennart Heyndels: electronics
Album information
Title: Lysis | Year Released: 2025 | Record Label: Igloo Records
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