Review of album 'Ancient Shadows' by Paul Jury in Morpheus music

You can ready the review online in MORPHEUSMUSIC

Review Extract:

STYLE:

Timeless ethereal songs with lush strings, downtempo percussion and passionate piano arrangements. Ancient Shadows opens with a piece of pure atmosphere - heavenly voice, smooth cinematic strokes and the calls of crows - this brief cut sets the tone for the rest of the album with an interplay of fairy tale light and haunted darkness running throughout. There are electrobeats and synthetic colours, plaintive piano chords and emotive orchestral strains forming a lush foundation for Pricilla's captivating vocals. Songs here are delicate and angelic, full of feeling and strong imagery - exploring themes and stories from dreams both benign and disquieting and developing ideas grown out of the mists of ancient folk lore and intimate imagination. Pricilla Hernandez also plays a number of the instruments on the album including keyboards, recorder, flute and whistle. The tracks here range from simple structures of voice and strings or piano through to some rather sweeping compositions, always with the sound revolving around a central vocal uniting everything storybook melancholy.

MOOD:

Overall a mood of romantic wistfulness touched with gothic shadow pervades this release. Edging toward folk music at times but mostly maintaining a contemporary edge and a movie score ambience. The cover imagery paints a gloomy world of pooled light and heavy silhouette and the music works within this same tonal range - brooding flights of fancy, crepuscular skies spied through knotted and ivy laced foliage, a female voice on the breeze hanging before unfathomable cloudbanks.

ARTWORK:

The artwork for this album is very generous with a three panel digipack opening out to reveal not one but two glossy booklets within. Everything is an ashen, purple tinted grey - a photographic portrait of the artist on the front cover with outstretched arm and the shadows of crows transparent against the dense air. On the reverse is one of Priscilla's illustrations - a pale skinned, fair haired figure in flowing robes of black, white and grey - an impression the singer that appears with numerous variations across the package. Opening up the sleeve reveals the dual nature of the project - gloom and twilight to the left, dappled woods and shafts of sunlight to the right. The twin booklets contain credits, lyrics, explanations of all songs and the project overall along with thanks all set against an array of powerful illustrations and photographs. The back page of one booklet includes a special code that unlocks some exclusive internet content that can be reached through a URL for the fan club

OVERALL

Ancient Shadows is a fully independent release that has allowed Pricilla Hernandez to present a lavish package that is brimming with music and artwork. As both songwriter and illustrator, she has brought her varied skills together to deliver a fantasy world of combined photomontage and painting, musical programming and performance. Promotional material explains that this is "a compilation of themes I’ve written on over the years. Some of them have been rescued from my childhood long before I ever dared to sing them. Some hidden in folders full of dust, others that have always been muttered shyly till I gave them a new shape". Collaborators on the project include guitarist Gaston Iungman, who plays on the track Nightmare with Héctor Corcin bringing his skills as co-mixer working on mastering, production and also developing some electronic pads and live percussion (including a frying pan) and electronic drums.

WHO WILL LIKE THIS ALBUM

This album will appeal to lovers of melancholy songs and fantasy ballads - the album leans a little toward new age aesthetics with plenty of gothic shade.