Grace – Aureliaslight
The album Grace is named after the daughter of the albums creator, Aureliaslight. The music represents a remembering, rebirth and renewal of that time of Grace's birth twenty years ago with the birth of Grace - The Album.
Aureliaslight has a number of releases under her previous artist title Jennifer Zulli but relaunched herself as Aureliaslight on the release of her 2018 album, Seasons.
The album was composed, performed and produced by Aureliaslight and mastered by the multiple Grammy winning icon of new age music, Paul Avgerinos.
The music is trademark Aureliaslight where upon a canvas of ambient and new age pads and atmospheres she paints her ethereal soulscapes dotted with brushes of piano and sublime, heavenly vocals. The end result is a painting of lush, warm environments with a somewhat otherworldly quality, like the voice of an inner world meeting with the emotive expressions of reality.
1 Illuminate
Five reverberated piano notes precede a gallery of chimes and shimmer against a backdrop of heavenly cloud like ethereal pads. This track seems to be a gateway or introduction, an invite to the healing ambience of the world you are about to enter. The continuous gentle chimes remind you that you are no longer in the place where you where but have entered a realm, a dimension that will unfold over the remainder of the album. A short but very sweet opener.
2. Insight
Ambient piano reminiscent of A Harold Budd/Eno ambient album but with enough melodic phrasing, passages of piano and chord changes to lift out of ambient into a kind of pastoral new age. The piano is delicate and touching with just a pinch of melancholia and a sense of yearning but that is a good thing. Whilst the music seems to look to the past it also has an optimistic aura, pregnant with hope for the future.
3. Grace
The title track Grace is resplendent with piano and string pads that uplift and land the listener, firmly now, in the landscape of Grace. Close your eyes and envisage endless fields of swaying grasses blown by the gentle breezes of spirit. It gives the listener a sense, that whilst you may think you are alone, you are not. This track displays Aureliaslight's skills in melodic structure, restrained but strong enough to evoke emotional responses and inner visions.
4 Love
A delightful multi harmony vocal phrase introduces to Love. Simple repeated piano phrases like a piano incantation with an echo effect appears before more vocal swells then at 2:56 you are hit with "All is Love" in all it's harmonic Glory as if a chorus of angels appeared from nowhere before disappearing behind their cloud of chimes as the music and words fade.
5 Compassion
Compassion may be favourite track on the album. It is a beautiful and slightly sorrowful piano compassion. It is a short track but beautifully played with tender ethereal vocals hovering softly over the piano keys. Yes it is short but will still take you deep inside and you may find it difficult to come back out into the world again, even after the track is finished.
6. Unfolding
This track is really up my street. What I would describe as ambient piano with Aureliaslight's trademark atmospheric reverb that is always very transporting. Notes are washed up on the shore from the gentle waves cascading in the background, each wave delivering sensations and feelings unfolding on the shore of mind. This tracks makes us realise that whilst this album is atmospheric and healing and meditative, it is also extremely emotional. The music is full of sensitivity of spirit, awareness of the past and hope for the future. I would go as far to say that this collection of tracks is soundtrack for emotions
7. Intuition
Musically, this track is a continuation or an epilogue to unfolding. The ambient piano and the feeling is there but the waves are more distant as one ventures inland to the unknown. With a sense of trepidation but awareness of what lies ahead, one continues anyway. Another very emotive and slightly haunting ambient piano piece.
8 Healing
Healing is the penultimate track and the single that was launched to herald Grace before it's release. The music takes a turn here from the ambient piano of the previous two tracks. A motion filled keyboard signal sets us off and becomes the backdrop for a beautiful multi layered pillow of vocal winds that blow between your ears and soothe the mind. Aureliaslight uses the instrument of voice to great effect on this track.
9 Transcendence
And so we come to Journey's end with the nine minute conclusion to the themes, concept and emotions explored in Grace. The piano returns, this time in tandem with ethereal harp sounds wrapped by the beautiful healing vocals of Aureliaslight. A deep drum beats at the heart of the track in the second quarter with almost a pagan entrancing quality that keeps the listener pulled deeper into the music. Subsiding then returning again. Swirls of synthesizers end out the track always guided by the vocals that ever so gradually, bring you back again.
Conclusion
I have done some work myself with female ethereal vocal artists and always enjoy listening to that and was in familiar territory on this ride. The thing I enjoyed most about this album was it's ventures into deeply emotional music and the taste of sweet melancholy which is never a bad thing and a very valid emotion. Listeners will love the beautiful ethereal vocals, atmospheres, heavenly pads and ambient pads but the album goes deeper than that to places where a lot of new and ambient music dares to tread. This is welcome and refreshing I hereby heartily recommend you get a copy of Grace by Aureliasligt.
Paul Landry
Oxford, England
April 8th