Techno experimentalist Lucy, real name Luca Mortellaro, returns for a third album, marking an ongoing shift away from club related material. The route of choice here delves headlong into hallucinatory worlds of paired back abstract sound, mythological referencing and shamanic chanting. If you are looking for anything remotely resembling a dance floor work out, this is mostly not the place. But if you fancy a lysergically drenched folkloric voyage then please come in, brace yourself, and enjoy the journey.
Lucy’s label, Stroboscopic Artefacts, has a history of combining myth with music (see Dadub – Untitled) and ‘Self Mythology’ follows similar inspiration with track titles that take in Slavic folklore and ancient Italian literature. To aid our trip, Jon Jacobs is drafted to provide improvised vocals, flute and percussion – all of which supply excellent eerie compliment to Lucy’s psychotropic audio palette.
"The route of choice here delves headlong into hallucinatory worlds of paired back abstract sound, mythological referencing and shamanic chanting."
The resultant soundscapes are steeped in meditative percussion, subtle synthesis and subdued organic mind expansion. There are hints of previous club orientated material – almost like Villalobos on one of his more deranged tribal moments via “Vibrations of a Circular Membrane” – but these are mere hints.
For the most this is a well executed exercise in channelling music as an entheogen. Just two tracks in and you’ll be furtively glancing at your speakers expecting ancient spirits to emerge. Album mid point sees the first burst of synthesis proper on “Meetings with Remarkable Entities” where juicy mangled modular melodies crawl atop the kind of landscape you can easily imagine such entities inhabiting.
"Self Mythology will slowly worm its way under your skin like any good ancient story and, for these ears, is Lucy at his best yet."
Things progress deeper still across the album’s second half: “A Millennia Old Adversary” is on point as soundtrack to an Ayahuasca induced encounter with your id from a previous life, surrounded by ancient forest and chanting natives. “She Wolf Night Mourning” conjures an imagination of lupine distress with unnerving accuracy.
Never afraid of potential hackneyed mythological cliché, Lucy allows the heavily trance associated concept of “Samsara” to get a look in – deftly fending off such accusation with a lovely piece combining Jacob’s haunted flute improvisation and crystalline modular oscillations. Self Mythology will slowly worm its way under your skin like any good ancient story and, for these ears, is Lucy at his best yet.
Self Mythology is released via Stroboscopic Artefacts on 6th May 2016, pre-order a copy here.
- Read our review of Lucy’s debut album ‘Wordplay For Working Bees’ (2011).
TRACKLIST
1. Baba Yaga’s Hut
2. Dissonance Emancipation
3. Vibrations Of A Circular Membrane
4. A Selfless Act
5. Meetings With Remarkable Entities
6. A Millennia Old Adversary
7. She-Wolf Night Mourning
8. Samsara
9. Canticle Of Creatures
Discover more about Lucy and Stroboscopic Artefacts on Inverted Audio.