Album Review: Eliana

To immerse yourself in Eliana, the most recent release from Te Whanganui-A-Tara’s Jim Wisp, is to embark on a genre-bending expedition through tranquility, ferocity, and everything in-between. As an instrumental effort, it sits on its own as an engaging piece of work that evokes images of a world in bloom, a climate made from a heaving breath that holds onto tender, calm images in the world of Eliana, but also showcases that world is not without trepidation.

It can be quite a tired trope to say that an instrumental album is ‘cinematic’, but I would be remiss if I didn’t infer that the images the album conjures feel just that. If the term is relating to, suggestive of, or suitable for motion pictures, then this can be said for much of the collection here. The intro track, Alone, is a rising, percussion-less piece that really does set a scene. As cello and violin dance around the clean, lengthy reverbed tone of an electric guitar, I am reminded of Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ Wind River score, painting a haunting, yet undeniably beautiful tone over the scenery of a snow-laden Wyoming. Alone is, as inferred, baron, cautionary, but dazzling nonetheless, and largely unrevealing of what is to come.

This atmospheric guitar carries into Signature Move but quickly takes on a new Eastern-style form with pleasant open chords, accentuated by acoustic guitars sitting low in the mix. Strings that follow compliment the change in scene as the ensemble crescendos into an unexpected prog-rock section, breaking down, building up, and erupting with a fiery blast of distorted guitars and ascending strings. The jump in setting is one of greater intensity and yet manages to reach the same levels of engagement and vision as the preceding track within this locked-in, Alan Parsons Project-like composition. It’s thoroughly enjoyable, refreshing, and still somewhat old-school. I bet it would rip live.

Dissolve retreats back to a heaving aura; visually, waves of strings that encroach on a shoreline as delayed guitar lines foam and then aptly dissipate into the sand. The chord progressions the guitar states are unpredictable, and the string section allows itself to be guided to compliment. It’s within these changing chords that the delay effect that rings from the guitar can find itself, perhaps unpleasantly to some, creating a kind of dissonance within the overlapping chords that may not exactly compliment the beauty of the piece. Equally, the arpeggiating guitar finds itself striking some very pleasant and alluring dyads and harmonies amongst the respiring track.

Similar movements and settings are drawn in Sky (Hook) and its sister track, (Sky) Hook, but this time, the speed of the tracks allow the compositions to soar with sweeping ride hits and strings in allegro contrasting the slow-picked guitar, coming to a huge overdriven crashing at the crossover point of the tracks. Oscillating guitar and tasty drum fills consume the airwaves before slipping back under the strings again. These two pieces accompany each other as a joint compliment to the album in the sense that it continues the trend of no real change in the ensemble of instruments, yet still unmistakably unique, bringing yet another vibrant characteristic and defined setting to the collection. Perhaps my favourite part of the whole EP comes in the breakdown of (Sky) Hook where a furiously strummed electric is torn apart through its own distortion and delay effects to a rising crescendo. I recall these kinds of moments in a recording process or jam session to be the most enjoyable as it’s a break from any restricting elements within carefully crafted compositions, in turn, adding a further element or characteristic to the effort.

Some of the most pleasant explorations of dynamics on the whole EP come from The Shrug. An almost nine minute epic of varying tension and imagery, it is a beautifully flowing and evolving piece that makes excellent use of sonic space. All the way from a high pitch note ringing overtop trancey, yet spacious delay and pizzicato strings to ending with a wall of reverb and distortion as a percussion section marches on to the end. I’m especially fond of this grooving wall of a wailing and bending guitar as it’s a pleasantly overwhelming pay-off for the ferocity and overdrive that’s been displayed on the EP so far.

Underthink serves as a fitting culmination of the various themes and motifs that have been explored in the project. Globetrotting styles accentuate the weaving sections, and the piece never fails to capture the idyllic, as well as the ferociousness, of the instruments. Strings rise and fall around well-crafted bass and guitar runs with oscillating delay (once again) with perfect tap tempo. I’m brought back to a similar engagement of a soundscape such as this as the first time I heard Tool’s Fear Innoculum, an album that similarly showcases moments that I consider to be calm and meditative as well as a fair share of aggressive riffage. Like many of the longer tracks here, the intensity is funneled into extended sections and breakdowns that are given enough time to bloom and beguile the listener, while never outstaying and becoming tired. To contrast the way the tunes bleed into one another or rise from a low, sometimes brooding intro, the end of Underthink pulls a Sopranos move on us and cuts out mid-sentence, letting us sit with the definitive and sudden end to quite a trip.

To review another entirely instrumental album has been a refreshing experience, and in the case of Eliana, I’ve been given the opportunity to explore the type of record that is undeniably unique on the Aotearoa release radar right now. An excellent soundtrack to an expedition of your own, evoking vivid scenery no matter where or how you might be listening. As the sole release under Jim Wisp, it’s a hulking record that makes a statement of expression and engaging dynamics which leaves me curious to see the artists natural progression from here, as I was at the closing of each individual track that Eliana offers.