A tale trapped somewhere between medieval fantasy epic and interstellar space opera, “Tysha” by Katarina Gryvul is meticulously crafted and distinctly gorgeous to experience even as it bewilders you. Released on Standard Deviation, this “Tysha” EP creates in you the sense of being adrift in a timeline that spans millions of years.
A woman peers out from the cover in a Pre-Raphaelite blur, gazing as if through a space suit designed by Da Vinci into a tesseract. This is as good a precision as you could possibly imagine for what this “Tysha” EP sounds like.
The voices of seemingly predatory nymphs scatter through metal resonators, preening and reflected by the nacreous tile of some fantastic gazebo lost to time in some mystic lagoon. A sinister angelic voice pierces the veil of music with startling, ASMR-like clarity. The recorded breaths and ends of plosives generate exactly this response, interrupted now only by chimes and plunging gong, like the narration of some dark fairytale.
“Vidsutni” sounds like an ancient lament; a sacred tale of some terrible event from a past millennium, carried by refugees from a distant star. The effects visited upon the deceivingly gorgeous vocals are so original and particular that they completely change the kind of narrative you build around what you are listening to. The liquid ion percussion merging with the breathy folk singing of some race of nymph comes across almost as if Bjork decided to take her project to the past instead of the near future.
“Inshi” cuts through a false sense of serenity with hard, buzzy industrial bass. Warped notes, signaling the dark night of the soul, culminate in a near cacophony that must mean disaster if the dour cinematic rush that follows us can be used as any guide, post-hoc.
The record can be deciphered this way, or perhaps it is best enjoyed for its intricate sonic scapes in the abstract. This has signaled a turn as tracks like “Porozhn’o” seemingly emanate from a Blade Runner-like cyberpunk dystopia, with trills of sharp edged synth and those huge arcs of crackling Zimmerian sound filling the background like a roving robotic eye.
-Winston Mann
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