Dancing Alone is a solid production where no expenses are spared. If you are a fan of Elska’s vocal textures or enjoy translucent gothic-ambient moods and melodies, this album will most appeal to you.
Silky smooth, ethereal, and quite reverberant
Elska’s Dancing Alone is a smooth, gothic-like set of tracks with strong female vocals by Laura Boland. The singer’s voice is silky smooth, ethereal, and quite reverberant. The album is both morose and elegant—reflecting on loneliness and a sense of continual longing as the artist delicately haunts the tracks with her voice. At some points, hints of older, perhaps folk-based musical traditions are emulated and its unique elements lend these sonic Polaroids a darker, new-age tone.
Boland’s voice is powerful throughout, and the opening moments of “Anna” contain abstract segments of ear-pleasing electronic tones. Her drifting articulation is ghostly yet clear; an otherworldly cry that calls one away from what one knows. The album feels, in moments, like a tripped-out homage to nature with all of its counter-intuitive qualities. “sa-molan” features dramatic Middle-Eastern strings. Plucked melodies, human breaths, and Elska’s signature vocals are brought to the foreground. Some of the instrumental sections sound a bit like classical works by Russian composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, but as with all the tracks, it’s Elska’s flowing vocalization that best holds the ear.
Altogether, Dancing Alone is a solid production where no expenses are spared. If you are a fan of Elska’s vocal textures or enjoy translucent gothic-ambient moods and melodies, this album will most appeal to you.
Dancing Alone is available on Time Released Sound. [Bandcamp]
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