Inhale… Exhale… Inhale… Exhale… Now, remember this sensation. The slow movement of breath which both bewilders and empowers your senses, for this is the closest feeling you will get to the auditory catharsis of Chrystal Für’s latest album, Elusion.
A nine-track release that sees the artist also known as Christopher J. Vibberts push beyond the cocoon of his previous two albums, he returns to his moniker’s roots. Moving like the warm Mexican sun which birthed this musical project, the album moves as one like a breeze following the sun on its daily passage. Bringing with it the energy of life and, upon its setting, an eternal promise of tomorrow.
Written and recorded during his sabbatical from scoring films and producing in California, this collection feels vaster than a movie. Auditorily creating a world of forces in meditative motion.
With a core heartbeat lodged amongst waves of static, each track builds through an effortless assortment of piano, cello, guitar, bass, keyboards, organ, Marxophone, melody harp, Tibetan singing bowl, samples, and profoundly effective sound manipulation techniques. Combining themselves into waves of texture so deep that they ricochets through your periphery. Providing you with the sort of comfort that can only be found amongst the sensations of ambience.
With the help of choreographer and visionary Andrea “Vale” Valeria Saravasti, the album apex’s calming precursor, ‘Memory of a Fading Home’, takes on a new life through film.
In her own words, Vale remarks that hearing ‘Memory of a Fading Home’ for the first time “set off an explosion of images and sensations including a tears-filled flow of memory of the initial awakening to the world. It moved me greatly and in that moment I knew how to direct this into a visual language: to show the relationship between the body and nature, starting with birth and with the exploration of nature and existence.”
“The body of the foetus metamorphosizes with every contact and experience; its being in an uncertain state of movement”
A process that took place in the same city which birthed Chrystal Für, Vale decided to collaborate with filmmaker Gabriel Camba to translate her Butoh dance images into an audiovisual language. “We decided to begin with a discovery of the universe by newborn beings.
We expressed that concept of initial exploration and experience as the worldly being emerges through the delicate form of liquid gravity where the unborn uses new skin to sense and transmit information to the spirit and mind.
The body of the foetus metamorphosizes with every contact and experience; its being in an uncertain state of movement. Everything is new. The state of continuous transformation is a characteristic of the experience of Butoh dance.”
Fading from calm ripples of honeydew skin to darkness, this film encapsulates the soul of the album. An oasis of tranquillity which leaves you longing for more of Chrystal Für’s auditory tonic to alleviate the pressures of the world.