File Under: Ambiance with a Piano rating: B- tracks 1. Sirens 2. Be That Day 3. Varuna 4. The Door 5. Garlands Racing 6. Drift 7. In this Wilderness 8. Closer 9. Blue Blinding Sun related links Elaine Lachica

Elaine Lachica layers thick vocals over piano, molding ambiance into a truly artistic endeavor.

Echos dominate the ambience, fading in and out on the opening track. It’s a short introduction, and a blurred one at that, as the listener knows not whether to expect more songs without beats accompanied with falling volumes, or will something more mainstream follow? It’s this unpredictability that is both Lachica’s strength and weakness.

More mainstream does follow, finally, coming in the third track, a backbeat with set and synthesizer introducing an adult contemporary piano ballad. After all, when it comes down to it, Elaine Lachica is a balladeer and the plethora of mixed backdrops serves only to emphasis the beauty of what remains constant: her illustrious voice.

Hush now, and mold with the puddles of your imagination through this audio waterfall. Lachica blends vowel with consonant in a tapestry of vocal ambience. Often overkill, the drama has no room to build, hitting emotional peaks like a seismograph, leaving the listener never knowing which direction the song is headed. The melodies have a mind of their own, connecting to the music in an obscure fashion, but varying so much in these connections the notes themselves don’t know which way they are destined to travel. An interesting, sporadic nature of music may be the attempt, but the melody often loses the listener in an abyss of uncharted progressions.

When drums lend a hand the partnership is a kind one, never intimidating the listener, but giving them room to breath a bit of the familiar—a break from the explorations of melody that unfortunately push “9” over the fine line separating music and art. It lands in the latter, and is no better or worse for it, yet like much art the audience is a select few with different ears than those at Rockzone.

Eric Myers is a Contributing Writer. Contact him at octoon@hotmail.com.