reveries by doris dana

Moving like a languid purple haze or a magenta plume of smoke, doris dana's reveries evokes deep, colourful emotion. The record draws inspiration from the work of Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, leaders of the Theosophical Society, an esoteric religious movement founded in New York in 1875. In their book Thought Forms: A Record of Clairvoyant Investigation, Besant and Leadbeater examined auras – spectral emanations surrounding the body of a living creature, visible only to those gifted with second sight. Their compendium, which inspired painters including Hilma Af Klint and Wassily Kandinsky, features glorious, psychedelic illustrations – painterly depictions of spiritual feeling.

Transposing the visual phenomenon of "thought forms" to the auditory sphere, reveries re-imagines the psychic field as vibration. Can love or longing be communicated outside of words? And what can harmonic resonance teach us about connection? Through her speculative sonic tableaux, doris dana conjures moments of transfixing beauty, nostalgia, and reverence, communicated through field recordings, ghostly synths, and misty voices.

Intuitive references dance through the album – the opening track, ‘marfa, 1984,’ might refer to the work of artist Donald Judd or just as easily summon a memory of a place, a photograph, or an unknown event. Gentle guitar chords float through the song, accompanied by mystical drones and choral interludes. The atmosphere becomes more solid on ‘oceanic symmetry’ where a plodding beat accompanies Voice Actor's poetic narration of wandering through a landscape, encountering the enveloping touch of fog.

On ‘depresión en el trópico,’ featuring the Brussels-based duo Law of Glances, intricate layers of electro-acoustic passages are overlaid as mechanical percussive utterances stutter and shake. Fragments of glass and snippets of conversation glide through ‘hyperreality II’, while on ‘sfumage,’ strange, folkloric emanations drift spectrally: a string-led refrain, an echo, a clatter.

The sound project of Colombian-born artist Mónica Mesa, doris dana delves into the abstract aesthetics of liminal spaces and intangible experiences. Her namesake arises from the secret love story of Chilean Nobel laureate poet Gabriela Mistral and her editor, Doris Dana. In her lifetime, Dana denied having a relationship with the writer, but their intimate letters tell a different story, one of deep romance and creative collaboration. Taking up this tale as another thematic framework, the musician became fascinated by the notion of unspoken bonds, pondering the enigmatic "the woman behind the great woman." The final song, ‘freed from desire,’ seems to encapsulate the intensity of their relationship – it swells, the tones pulsating as wordless vocals spark, then fade into the shadows.

- 𝘛𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘣𝘺 𝘏𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘢𝘩 𝘗𝘦𝘻𝘻𝘢𝘤𝘬

A rush of warm whispers, blurred from the heart

Sub-label Somewhere Between Tapes

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