Radiant Heart
Brocken Spectre

Seance Centre: ...We humans, the nascent beings that we are, still haven’t quite figured out the full potential of music. Dancing, meditating, emoting, protesting; these are all pretty basic. But what if we communicated more complex ideas with music? What if we codified all of our activities with music? This idea came to composer Joanne Forman when she was commissioned to create the soundscape for an environmental exhibition of sculpture called Artifacts from an Alien Civilization in 1987. The sculptures, elaborate ruins that had been found on the moon, begged the question: who created them and for what purpose? Joanne Forman imagined that Earth’s moon was a vacation spot for advanced beings from another galaxy. Cave Vaults of the Moon became a collection of sonic texts describing the fun things that went on there; earth-viewing, collecting information, building and playing. In her mind the sculptures in the exhibit were the remnants of a deserted playground of moon castles.

ORANGE MILK RECORDS: ...Review from 'a closer listen' ~"Luis Pestana‘s debut is unlike anything else on Orange Milk Records; in fact, it’s like little else on the market. The set unfolds like a radio play, embracing multiple genres and instruments: choirs and church bells, woodwinds and hurdy-gurdy. The Portuguese artist calls Rosa Pano “his own folklore, inspired by his mother’s lullabies,” although the timbres are more likely to wake a listener up than to lull one to sleep. There are no track breaks, providing a seamless experience; one is drawn into the dream. We would not be surprised to see a troupe adopt the extended piece for an exercise in creative choreography.“Oneia” begins as a slow march with church bells, a female voice and a sense of procession. At the end of the track, a clock is wound and allowed to tick; a baby begins to cry. Then chimes ring out and the tape enters a new phase, a fairy-tale world populated by buzzing sprites and synthesized surges that seem more Subtext than Orange Milk. Is the baby sleeping yet? As of Track 3, she is not. Multiple voices converge, keeping her awake and agitated. A short, solid drone leads to the busiest piece, “Au Romper Da Bela Aurora” (“A Break from the Beautiful Dawn”), where zither lays the foundation for an architecture of operatic voices.The electronic tones return for the end run, percussive in nature, implying a flight through the forest back to safer ground. At the end of “Asa Machina,” the machines break down with a stutter, revealing a persistent choir. A lone flute, possibly from Pan, leads to the nine-minute title track, in which a siren’s cry is answered by a chorus of wolves. As a final drone approaches, the fairy tales crash together on a single shore. Once again, church bells ring, the mysterious story returning to the beginning: cycling, although changed, like a dreamer nourished by fantastic visions. Are we dancing or are we dreaming? Either way, we’ve grown enchanted by Pestana’s folkloric world."(Richard Allen)acloserlisten.com/2020/11/22/luis-pestana-rosa-pano/ Celeste (vocals) Elizabete Francisca (vocals)Alibori H. (woodwinds) Bruno Pereira (zither)Janita Salomé (arrangement and vocals on 5)Vitorino (vocals on 5) Carlos Guerreiro (hurdy-gurdy on 5)Contains samples from Julia Wolfe, Warner Jepson,José Pinhal and Krzysztof KomedaWritten and produced by Luis PestanaMastered by James PlotkinArtwork by Mariusz LewandowskiLayout by Keith Rankin and Adrienn Császár