Lisa Gerrard and Marcello De Francisci – Exaudia

By RingMaster Review on September 30, 2022 • ( 0 )

Fascination and captivation can come in a vast array of forms, in moments and experiences which are hungrily memorable and so often richly inspiriting. Exaudia is one such moment, a creative adventure which is as cinematically majestic as it is atmospherically enlivening and emotively rousing; simply put it is a stunning close your eyes and immerse proposal.

Exaudia is the new album from the creative collaboration between legendary DEAD CAN DANCE vocalist and highly acclaimed film composer LISA GERRARD and Los Angeles-based composer/ record producer MARCELLO DE FRANCISCI. Since meeting many years ago through soundtrack work, the pair has collaborated across many soundtrack scores and in Departum, a debut album released in 2018. Exaudia, a “term used when a monarch grants a citizen of his kingdom an audience and, as a result, consents to a wish”, is an exploration of ambience, intimation and craft; a release seeming to court the shadows which wrap lives from the regal to personal intimacy and certainly one which is an examination for ears and the imagination which sparks one’s own personal connections.

When The Light Of Morning Comes opens up the record, emerging like an opportunity carrying dawn upon the senses through the mistiness of De Francisci’s sounds and in turn the warm glow of Gerrard’s harmonic casting. The cinematic prowess of both immediately stirred the imagination and emotions, the darker textures of the piece urging deeper contemplation as the track reached out in emotive and suggestive orchestration.

The haunting and increasingly dramatic start is only escalated by Until We Meet Again, it too rising up from a distant realm to weave its own poetic and scenic proposal. Like eyes first sighting a wondrous new landscape, ears were drawn to a new realm of temptation, the song growing and broadening its land with epic grandeur and bewitching beauty with Gerrard’s tones as magnetic as De Francisci’s melodic weave, both uniting in thick captivation with palpable tension and darkness to it.

Fallen calmly drifts around the senses next, Gerard a warm siren for ears and thought as the track slowly but with mesmeric beauty swept the senses. Unpredictable moments as potently fall into the tapestry of enterprise, a shamanic hue and incitement escalating the compelling nature of the song before the album’s title track took that ritualistic hue to a fuller and individually adventurous settlement of invention and involvement. With physicality to its ethereal breath and tempestuousness to its majestic body, the track seduced, embroiled and rapaciously aroused the senses to seize favourite album moment.

Just as absorbing though was the following Stories of Love Triumph & Misfortunes, an evocative serenade of voice and melody which similarly had us eagerly diving into its humble splendour, one which, like Gerrard’s ever gripping tones, grew bolder and more gripping by every passing evocative moment.

Stay With Me epitomises the release, its body one of beauty, sumptuous captivation and spellbinding textures which evoked emotion and the senses and in turn the imagination to conjure its own places whilst courting the realms cast by LISA GERRARD AND MARCELLO DE FRANCISCI.

With a reprise of the title track a final incitement of all the craft and invention within its creators and of the unshackled pleasure found towards the release, Exaudia simply swept us up in its creative grandeur and intimate suggestiveness, voice and sound in perfect and expansive union for one of the year’s most enlivening and epic moments which you can immerse in too @ https://open.spotify.com/album/42bAH8XiKRdGWkKPFpreTw

Exaudia is out now on vinyl and digitally via Atlantic Curve; all platform links available @ https://orcd.co/exaudia