Delphine Dora — A Stream of Consciousness

I’m not quite sure what the aggregate audience for music which falls into the “modern” classical and minimalist genres, but I assume this would include mainly more contemplative types or those in search of a respite from our increasingly Iphone/multimedia/socially mediated world. This new full length album on the relatively new offshoot of the Siren Wire Label entitled A Stream of Consciousness allows us to peer into a window of a peculiar subset of outsider classical; an appropriately quiet label releasing limited edition works on the CDr format.

While the minimalist tag may bring to mind most often the works of Phillip Glass, this new work by Delphine Dora is certainly no exercise in repetitive simplicity. Instead, the minimal quality is delivered by the strict limitation in the way of use of staccato piano notes, and then again of the note sets themselves. Rather than cyclical melodies per se, instead the melodic content is conveyed in a style more akin to a pointillist portrait. Much of the album indulges luxuriantly in its similarities to a summer rainstorm: the wax and wane of sound density, the tightening and relaxing of note frequency, the plaintive quality of the beauty in simplicity. A few tracks (most notably on Obsessions) do however charge ahead with traditional melodic structure.

I have heretofore been unfamiliar with Dora’s work, but I find this piece may yield further secrets in comparison to the preceding albums. This may be a daunting task being that she tends to flit from one obscure label to the next, and also her personal website has not been updated since 2006. Regardless, a definite talent and unique take on a very old (perhaps even… tired) instrument is a refreshing change of pace from uncompromising noise works, the endless mire of mediocre synthesizer drone albums and, overblown technicality (this washed the nasty residue of the newest The Faceless album out of my ears).