The title speaks to loss and transition, grief and new horizons, confusion and transitions, with each piece consisting of a broad range of instrumentation, ambient environments and connective aesthetics.
A soundtrack for a more complex, deeply nuanced and dynamic emotional experience
Recorded as part of a live performance with AV artist AJ Vanderelli, this new release on Behind The Sky Music continues the legacy of Lisa Bella Donna’s sweeping composition and ever-increasing mastery of synthesis. Mourning Light is a tonal departure from 2021’s earlier The World She Wanted, Turning Point and Ascension among others, while continuing from a similar dimension. (Lisa’s clearly been busy this year! Another release, in collaboration with Moog, titled Moogmentum, is out now too.) There is a broader sense of orchestration and haunting inspiration on this record than the previous two, like a soundtrack for a more complex, deeply nuanced and dynamic emotional experience.
The title speaks to loss and transition, grief and new horizons, confusion and reorientation, with each piece consisting of a broad range of instrumentation, ambient environments and connective aesthetics. This seems very much to be a deeply intentional message and overarching theme. This record is dedicated in loving memory to Zachary Pahl and Matthew Bush. (May they rest in peace—my sympathies, condolences and respects to Lisa, their families and friends.)
“Mourning Light Pt. I & II“
Mourning Light opens quietly into a lush, brooding ambient environment, like waking up to a new day with the heavy heartache of yesterday in tow. A bass note rings in foreboding, booming and bending steadily throughout. Washing cymbals turn confusion to dread while the ambient peace ebbs quietly, sheepishly, in the background. Cellos ring in both sadness and light. Dissonant synthetic cellos speak to conflicting feelings—loss with perhaps a hint of hope, of hesitant resolve. A trickle of water and rush of waves communicate that the environment has changed, while transiting through a shifting landscape.
Operatic vocals act as voices from beyond the veil, calling and reaching to the listener and creator. Flutes later harken a sense of wonder and the beauty in sadness, turning to joy and a sense of new life, of spring, at times. Occasionally throughout, analog synth leads, evocative of Vangelis and Yes, dance over the mix.
Bells and church organs conjure a phantom chapel, ringing out for the living. At over 40 minutes in scope, this piece reads as the complete score for an episode of hard experience (perhaps as it was in its original live setting with accompanying visuals). Towards the latter third of the track, sequenced sets of tentative, soft sine wave steps suggest a path forward has been found. A longer walk into the stages of grief moves forward. A deeper structure appears. A hard pluck of a string reverb occasionally hits, perhaps, like a distorting silver cord or thread to another world.
“Mourning Light Pt. III“
The second piece on this record opens with a sense of immensity, afterlife, or the great beyond, shimmering with reverb-drenched analog pads and staccato plucks. Sonar-like synth stabs echo like sirens or klaxons at first, then subside into sci-fi lilts like the firing of synapses, while bells again join the fray and evoke a religious or spiritual periphery.
Around 10 minutes in, pulsing arpeggios and synthesized drums usher in a definitive new stage of energy, a heavy fortitude or resolve in the wake of tragedy—putting one foot in front of the other despite the seemingly unbearable depression that accompanies deep personal loss. And yet, a soaring lead joins the rhythmic journey, laced with life and transformation.
Then, a complete tempo and tonal shift hits like a wall of confusion. We encounter a disruption of the resolve that tests it and re-orients the observer. Leads and rhythms dance with almost manic intensity and re-assertion of resolution with whatever it takes in the face of existential crisis.
Finally, a completely enveloping sawtooth banishes everything else. The landscape is sandblasted away with waves of minor-key resonance and immense filter sweeps – a comedown from the confusion and mania, like existential bedrock. All that remains is a heartbeat, a fall of tones, and enveloping ambience, and finally, vacuum. We reach a reset point in the stages of grief.
“Mourning Light Pt. IV“
The shortest of the three pieces on this record, Pt. IV opens with a wind-swept plateau in expansion of Pt. III’s vacuum. It reads deeply as acceptance, the 7th and final stage of grief. Singing bowls add their tones to the wind, ushering a meditative wash of resignation, a laying down of arms to the infinite. It’s almost as if we ourselves are now in heaven or can peer somewhat into it, into the realm of the ineffable—a place where all time exists at once so there is no need, really, to grieve, while knowing we still will, and must. We rise again for another day while knowing both of those things to be true—holding two separate and seemingly opposed emotional dimensions in the midst of being human.
Mourning Light is available on Behind The Sky Music.
[Bandcamp | Release page]
