By Charlie Maybee
Finnish multi-instrumentalist, composer, and musician, Veera Tuomi (also known by her stage name, Veera Neva), is back with her second solo album Grande Onde which translates into “Big Wave” in French which alludes to an exploration of a certain musical approach to physics.
“The theme of the album is water, its movement and its sacredness” Tuomi writes, “Water is a metaphor for the flowing and transforming movement of life. A narrative across the different forms of water runs through the album, starting from the depths of the primordial sea, breaking through the ice into vortices and currents, wandering through a rainy mist towards a great wave that brings the cycle of life back to the start again.”
Much like the natural flow of water, there’s a heightened sense of meditation that comes through in the album as it pieces together weird, synthesized soundscapes with captured audio of natural water sound, and ethereal saxophone lines and vocals. Despite being only 4 tracks long, the album lasts over 30 minutes and cohesively merges experimental ambience with jazz tones and, at times, light electronic backbeats.
The collection will have you feeling untethered like a stray leaf caught in a breeze or floating down a river, and you can feel the music shift like water currents moving through a variety of different locals: rivers, waterfalls, oceans, rain. Depending on where you are at any given moment, you may experience these moments very differently. It washes over you like a crashing wave, but it is a ghostly force that doesn’t push so much as presses down upon the listener. Like water, it gently flows and vibrates through you.
Grande Onde is available on major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. Find this single and more new exciting music on our Alchemical Multigenre Mixdown Playlist on Spotify.
Charlie Maybee is a dancer, musician, educator, and writer based in Charleston, South Carolina who currently teaches with the Dance Program at the College of Charleston. His primary work as an artist is with his performing collective, Polymath Performance Project, through which he makes interdisciplinary performance art that centers tap dance as the primary medium of expression and research. He also currently plays rhythm guitar for the Charleston-based punk band, Anergy, and releases music as a solo artist under the name Nox Eterna.
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Alchemical Records is a Washington, D.C. based music publication. We cover the Washington, D.C., Baltimore and Richmond, VA metro area music scenes, including band interviews, articles about your favorite musicians, new music and concert dates.
