Ana Roxanne – Because Of A Flower

Kranky

I think Ana Roxanne has really found their home on Kranky. This second album, expanding on last year’s ~~~, plays with the kind of delicate atmospheres and mysterious textures that are the label’s stock in trade.

Ana choses a kind of gossamer fluidity and heavenly vocalising that washes over the listener like a dream, but it is a dream that requires thought and input from us. The choice of spoken word and sampled dialogue that interweaves the slender pieces is testament to the thinking that Ana wishes us to do, but the beautifully measured backdrops are a balm for the troubled souls of these current times.

A loop of voices discussing harmonic experience opens the album and that diffuses into a warm drone with an equally warm ululating voice, drifting wordless on a beatless bed with a real sense of calm and relaxation, like floating in warm water. The subtle evolution of the piece finds us lulled by the looped vocal; whereas by contrast, “Suite Pour l’Invisible” is tranquil in a different way. Buoyed by synth notes and a deep thrum of bass strings, it sees us hovering over a frozen pond, the voice ascending like gossamer into a cloudless sky, kissing our ears as the simple lullaby insinuates. It manages to make the kind of stuff that Julie Cruise was releasing with Angelo Badalamenti sound positively heavy by comparison.

There is something about the way the sound travels as if it is moving through incredibly fresh air, unhindered by any sort of pollution. It is an exquisite sensation, a faint echo resounding on the voice as the subtly produced soundscapes linger in the ear. I am reminded at points of some of Michael Brook‘s work, if only in the ability to capture a fleeting moment of pure calm and send it out to us with cyclical certainty.

There is a latin rhythm on the sunbleached “Camille” and the mystery is added to by the French dialogue from Le Mystère Alexina. It fits perfectly, our ears straining to intercept a word or two as the drama unfolds. Jessica Shepherd‘s poetry is set to the sound of a Highland hymn on “Venus”, and the voice is delightful, though the sample of windswept water is anything but. It is a brief note of dissonance that is remedied by the final piece, with its elegant bass tones plucked slowly and suffused with meaning. A voice speaks of hope and passion, and by the time it leads us out with a hymnal piano procession and further distant voices, it has taken on an almost rustic manner that is all the more surprising when it drifts away to silence.

Ana has much to say about the state of the world and the suffering of certain groups. This album is a gorgeous salve and her way of opening up the dialogue, and inviting everybody in. It is a very welcome invitation.

-Mr Olivetti-