Luna Firma - Reviews
Falling Towards Atlantis - Hypnagogue Review
<< The debut release from Luna Firma, the duo of Kuutana and Eric “the” Taylor, is a graceful, narrative-driven album filled with small sounds and vivid aural imagery >>
 | Some quotes from the review of the the Luna Firma "Falling Towards Atlantis" debut album: “Between Me and the Sea” sets the scene with wave sounds and shimmering tones, then brings in piano to open the vista. The backdrop is both fluid and dreamlike, and a nice dose of echo gives it dimension" "I’ve listened to Falling Toward Atlantis a good number of times, and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve lost track of time while listening." To Read the full review, visit the article page here at Hypnagogue.net To listen or buy the album  |
Essay by George Miler - Inspired by Luna Firma's "Falling Towards Atlantis"
With permission, we've reposted this essay written by scholar and writer George Miler, inspired by Luna Firma's "Falling Towards Atlantis". Ambient Soundscapes are wonderful companions to the creative process. It's our pleasure to share you this listener experience.
There Are Adventures and There Are…Other Adventures
The long swells coming in off the Cronian Sea – which is now called the Atlantic – crashes on the white sand with the same familiar carrump-whoosh that I have heard in other lives. It is a comforting sound. It says that after all, the doings of the little creatures that scuttle on her shores on sail on her side blue expanse are nothing much to her. But she means a lot to us. The pattern created on a sonic spectroscope can resemble human speech. Unmistakably vocal, the breakers speak, saying:
At-LAN-tis. At-LAN-tis.
“Between Me And The Sea” (Track One) is a swishy, flowing sound, something large moving and then, from far away, but very clear, comes a call. This voice is deep and musical. It has a rising inflection which makes it sound like a question.
“Glass Bottom Boat” (Track Two) is Luna Firma’s reply. To speak, not just cry out, or bray, or howl, implies a mind at work. Of what does it speak? Looking at it this way, an intelligence might observe that all creatures live the same amount of subjective time in their natural lives. We must seem to race about like mad insects, buzzing down the summer of our days. Yet slow down the sound of crickets and you can hear a mighty chorus, a kind of singing or chant, although the singers keep sliding in and out of phase with one another. If you speed whale song fifteens times, it sounds like birdsong. And if you slow down birdsong, it sounds like whales.
Slow down human voices and you get Falling Towards Atlantis. The broad harmonic sections are the vowels, the xylophonic and pianistic intervals the consonants, harpistic elegance the emotions, slow enough for the sea to understand.
This also helps the voyager as he traverses the ocean, sensing a meaning in the motion and flux of the waves, like a Polynesian in the state of perception that permits him to see the coming of a pattern out of the chaos, and learning that an island lies near. Our navigator cannot understand and act on it yet. Only that something is there.
“Open Night Air” (Track Five) and there is indeed something there, beneath the interface between wind and water. The sea is a medium of sound. Of what do such sonorous, long voices speak? Of the flitting mayflies, alive for the day? He hears them – whales, conch horns blowing…
“Approaching Atlantis” (Track Six) is the final track, in the long form and marvelous. He is trying it seems, at the opening, but now all he can do is question, for one part of him is sinking, and another is rising from the depth, something he wants to do, something he has to be, something strange and wonderful, something desirable to be.
Now he sees truth. Now he hears the ancient seabells, the old bones scattering in the currents. Kings and emperors, conquerors and concubines: shadows that flicker for an instant and are gone. Tales as old as the race itself – or older – rooted in the chaos that is the mother of creation. Time returns to show an image in the confines of a mirror…
George Miler
Feb. 12, 2016
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