Artist: Jaia
Album: Fiction
Record Label: Digital Structures
Artist Website: jaia.net.free.fr
Buy this Album from Saikosounds here!
Review:
Jaia, the French ambient / progressive psychedelic trance master Yannis Kamarinos, is coming out to the United States, and more specifically, Seattle next month. If you are unfamiliar with Jaia, allow me to help a little.
Jaia’s latest album is called Fiction and was released by Digital Structures. Anyone who listens to my regular radio shows would know that while I never really play much progressive psytrance, I do like to listen to it. It is the thing I enjoy in the privacy of my own home, to unwind and catch a fantasy world with. It can be much like my bed. In fact, I would say that this is a very apt description of Jaia’s album Fiction indeed.
I currently live directly on Burnside. Burnside is a few yards from the window next to my bed. It is loud, rumbling and distracting. It is dangerous, fast and chaotic. As I sit at my computer right now I can hear the cars driving by and the Trimet bus engines disturbing the tranquility of the rain soaked roads. But even though my bed is right next to this wall of noise, once I climb into its thick cozy warmth and welcoming softness, the rest disappears.
Fiction is more than 8 tracks and various interludes, it is an entirety of soft welcoming coz-itude. If one where if you were to take the track Eyengal and listen to it, you would find a track that is danceable and mellow. Driving but nurturing and, most noticibly, something which doesn’t see to make sense or feel right. The track itself, while good, is about as helpful as a single sheet on a cold night while sleeping on the floor. It is not your bed. It is not soft and weighing you down with multiple layers of diffrent colors and different cuddle blankets.
Each track on here gets separated by the tracks surrounding it with short little abstract musical interludes which weave the listener in and out of the various phases of the entire journey. Without these interludes, the album might be just another collection of tracks put together as an album. This is not the product we have though. Jaia has brilliantly weaved together an album of such sonic beauty and rich cozy blankets, that it is sometimes hard to fully appreciate.
This is one album which I cannot just put on in the middle and listen to a few tracks. This albums cries out for an entire listening and complete absorption. Much like my bed last night after I added new blankets for the cold nights that are now upon us. The soft white and brown blanket that I have had since youth would not be enough for the night, I needed to wrap my body up in layers of comforting protective warmth and be consumed by it all. Which I did and slept beautifully because of.
Jaia ‘Fiction’ is that to me. Rich, thick, warm and inviting. You can’t always share it with everyone, but those who understand, understand it well.
xoxox
-A’damn