When describing the second single off her most recent album, The Practice of Love, Jenny Hval shrugged that the song (High Alice) "goes to all the places I have taught myself to avoid, like the four Big Themes: love, death, life, the ocean. The ocean. The ocean.” We at Deepest Currents are unabashed suckers for these Big Themes, and have no hang ups about it, so when a composer expertly weaves them together, we're hooked. Water imagery is the bait that gets us most times (I mean, look at our site's name), and when we received an advanced copy of Andrée Burelli's Mediterranean-inspired album, we knew that it would be of high interest to us. And sure enough, the artist who formerly performed as Bodyverse has created an incredible ode to Sardinian countryside and ocean landscapes found there.
De Sidera is mostly instrumental, but Burelli sings wordless vocals on two of the album's central productions: the title track and side B's Cum Sidera. She explains that there is a certain emotive power in using this invented language to paint mood and texture, and has found inspiration in various lingual traditions from Southern Europe. The album's many improvised compositions are just as striking too. Opener Mediterraneo feels like a careful walk down to the shore, and the back-to-back tracks Natura Domina and Cuore Di Piuma like a warm evening slowly falling into dusk. To write and record De Sidera, Burelli isolated herself an intimate space, and often watched the sunset from a window in her home between the mountains and the sea. Closing your eyes while playing the album in its entirety, you can almost feel the fading warmth of that sun - shimmering and disappearing below the horizon. The aforementioned Big Themes are all present here, and beautifully so. On this stunning album, Andrée Burelli has shared those moments with us, and the way she has described her Italian homeland without words is something to cherish.
De Sidera is out this Friday through American Dreams Records, and you can find it here. Below, you can hear an advanced track.