Search - Lisa Walker :: Grooved Whale

Lisa Walker
Grooved Whale
Genres: Dance & Electronic, New Age

Track Listings (11) - Disc #1
1. Tenakee Feeding Call
2. Transients
3. Misticete
4. Hawaii Gruv
5. Boogie
6. Vertigo
7. ViolinLaugh
8. Melancholy
9. Backwards Unfolding
10. Transfixed
11. Winter Song

CD Details

All Artists: Lisa Walker
Title: Grooved Whale
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Release Date: 10/1/2001
Genres: Dance & Electronic, New Age
Styles: Ambient, Electronica, Environmental, Nature
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 696208010820

Synopsis

Album Description

Here?s a wholly new approach to making music for and from whale songs. Walker plays violin into underwater landscapes, and the resulting recordings are wonderfully rich raw material for her studio-based compositions. Aquatic canyon walls and open spaces create a cathedral-like presence to her sound, and she builds the pieces around especially interesting and well-recorded whale songs. She adds subtle electronics that range from watery to funky, and while the overall tone is embracingly atmospheric, she avoids new-age cliches, using her classical training to forge a musical response to the whales that has a musical complexity that remains delightfully lyrical. Walker has spent years pusuing three complementary paths: classical music training, cutting edge media technology, and field research in Alaska. She brings these diverse gifts together here in a way that will appeal to listeners across the soundscape spectrum.

CD Reviews

Two Ships in the Night

Robert Carlberg | Seattle | 04/02/2006

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Violinist Lisa Walker at first set out to study whale vocalizations in Alaskan waters, but soon came to value their enigmatic songs more for their artistic content than for any detached scientific interest. Combining underwater hydrophone recordings with her own new-agey violin + synthesizer tunes, she has crafted an "interspecies ambient" album (her term) which unfortunately emphasizes mystery over understanding.

It seems like a missed opportunity to me that her music does not attempt to incorporate whalesong except as occasional backdrop. She also mentions on her website (groovedwhale.com) that she played her violin to the whales through underwater speakers and it would have been nice to know whether the humpbacks responded to this in any way.

Alas, "communication" does not seem to have been the goal and it certainly did not emerge as a result. What we have is a rather lackluster new age album with some whale recordings in the background."