WL//WH Review VIOLET NOX
photo by Kayla Avitabile
Violet Nox, the Boston-based electronic trio, returns with their eighth album, “Silvae”, via Somewherecold Records.
Bridging prismatic facets of ambience, trance, dub, EDM, rave, electro-pop, cold wave and techno into a surreal, entrancing, and vivid genre-bending whole, the six-track collection is an imaginative and transformative sonic landscape shaped by Dez DeCarlo’s intricate synthetic frameworks, layered effects, and evolving iterations, and Andrew Abrahamson’s fusion of textured synths, samples, and clock-driven machines, where Noell Dorsey’s hauntingly organic vocals usher listeners through the thought-provoking environs, with her evocative lyricism, emotional depth and introspection.
The opener “Spectre” slowly builds a haunting in-between realm where passionate articulations discuss grades of awareness amidst a keen symmetry of hypnotic and animating textures. A fleeting flute-like ending stirs the listener into the reverberating, atmospheric, edgy pads of “Wanderlust,” scattered by nervous knocks, sparse sharp hits, grim gurgling bottom loops, and a glowing, desolate string wandering, to engulf soulful vocal harmonies whilst pondering unreachable heights.
The droning, pulsating reiterations of “Whisper” evoke a sense of disruption and off-kilterness using a glassy and buzzing array of synth and clocked machines around desperate vocals, wearily travelling down a road of inspiration, dreams, and desire.
Revolving around a sneakingly nagging low end, “Serenade” bridges the second part of the sonic journey, shifting into an obsessive, sinister mood to probe memory and the inner spark, submerging layered expressions, but for moments of crystalline lucidity, with an assault of disconnected jarred frequencies, seamlessly ensued by the busy percussive instrumental number “Arcturus”, blending brisk, stabbing melodies with muffled, bouncy tribal patterns, indecipherable voice clips, and expanding lonesome synthetic horizons, to slow things down with the soul-stirring, evocative cosmic close “Meniscus” that finds the traveler waiting in uncertainty, behind an ocean, before a final, high, quivering cry.
“Silvae” is a sensorial journey, a delicate interplay of light and shadow, clarity and mystique, fantasy and reality wrapped in a cinematographic aesthetic, to conjure up both nostalgia and contemplation. It invites full immersion, stimulating the body, mind, and soul with a finely tuned balance of universal consciousness and infinite imagination.
Violet Nox‘s new 8th album, “Silvae”, is out now on limited CD & Digital, via Somewherecold Records and Aumega Project.
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