It’s not often I run into a musical project like Lyra Pramuk’s. She is the kind of artist that did away with most of what conventions are, at least when it comes down to styles and labels. It is obvious that she has no regard for cookie-cutter/run of the mill/dime a dozen kinds of approaches to music. With an incredibly open mind and a brave heart she delivers a thrillingly honest musical discourse to her listeners.
Her newest offering, Delta, makes no exception from this. Featuring the entirety of Fountain as remixed/reworked material, along with some fresh material as well, the record pushed the envelope of what we tend to expect usually from music. Don’t start imagining that this is some zany sound sculpture or some wild psychoacoustic experiment, it doesn’t go to those kinds of realms. Delta seems to take a highly impressionistic and surreal attitude, which becomes immediately obvious upon a first listen, although it took me weeks to figure out that those would be the right words to encompass that feeling.
We’re obviously looking at tunes that are difficult to describe. I’m not going to ask to be excused for what are possibly lousy and barely appropriate quantifiers/descriptors, but we’re all perfectly aware that words are usually meaningless in the face of music.
Delta could be described as something highly kinetic, cinematic, bright, lively, but simultaneously as something pensive, expansive, profound, epic, larger than life. It is also many things, which in turn reside in between those things and their respective nuances.
While the music is for all intents and purposes electronic, taking cues from folk, classical, glitch, IDM, EDM, pop, ambient, and soul, it sort of elevates itself by taking on an avant/experimental mindset. Through this, it breathes new life into things which have been tried in every direction. It also accomplishes wild textures and moods which simply defy explanation, they are things which reside in the realm of unspoken feelings.
At one point in my string of spins of this record, I felt like I was watching a slideshow with snapshots from alternate realities, other worlds, things that feel like they’re incredibly far, untouchable, but somehow deeply relatable and also palpable on some kind of metaphysical level.
I guess what I’m trying to say ultimately, is that it’s one of those albums which hearkens to the properties of an experience more than anything else. It’s more than a simple journey of sound, it’s like venturing into the unknown and coming out on the other side of the universe with your eyes open for the first time.
Definitely don’t go into this record expecting an easily digestible listen or anything of the sorts. It’s massive in many aspects and it holds back nothing in letting itself unfurl with all its splendor and glory. Be humble, and let it consume you whole so that you may unwind its intricacies and essence.
