Phaedra: Blackwinged Night

Phaedra is a project led by Ingvild Langgård who is a graduate of the Oslo Academy of Fine Arts and has been involved in many different art forms before music became center stage. She released her first CD The Sea in 2011 and is back with her latest disc Blackwinged Night.

On the album Langgård adds vocals, harmonium, zither, korg delta and bass and is joined by eight guest musicians playing a variety of instruments like violin, viola, clarinet, drums and flute. There is a nice blending of acoustic and electric instruments and the sound is lush and dreamy and the pace is very slow and luxurious. The first track "Lightbeam" is representative of what you will find here; lush vocals and gently flowing multi-layered soundscapes giving the track an extremely dreamy vive with equal elements of pop and folk. In "Too Much Sugar" Langgård's vocals are particularly dreamy over a dense backdrop of synths, glockenspiel, percussion, voice samples and a heavy drum beat. "Half Human" has a darker vibe with dense synthesizer layers and a gorgeous vocal arrangement. The title track is along a similar vein as many of the other tracks, very slow, lush and dense due in large part to the heavy use of violin and viola. "The Void" is another mellow offering with sparse and subtle instrumentation and jazzy lead vocals.

My one complaint is that many of these songs are quite similar and are hard to separate from each other after listening to the album. That said, Phaedra certainly has as its own style and doesn't stray very far from that sound. If dream pop is to your liking Blackwinged Night might be an album worth exploring.

Track Listing:
1. Lightbeam
2. Too Much Sugar
3. Half Human
4. Blackwinged Night
5. The Void
6. Mend Me
7. Finally Unfolding

Added: November 30th 2015
Reviewer: Jon Neudorf
Score:
Related Link: Label's Official Site
Hits: 2000
Language: english

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