Lux Interna - There Is Light in The Body, There Is Blood in the Sun

Autumn is knocking on my door, and it's a right time for rethinking, reviewing, a little bit of melancholy. It was a big challenge to survive this extremely hot summer, but today it's already behind, nights become longer, mornings colder and everything fades before the upcoming winter. My ears feel hunger for some dark melodies, my heart longs for a gentle rhythm, and my hands reach out to grab the exact cds while I will try to describe an impression from one of them through this review.

The relationships between physical space and virtual space are not new, their reflections are captured everywhere during last ten years, in all our deeds and experiences. That's why Lux Interna cannot feel that they explore new boundaries, but they definitely take the theme to a deeper, more spiritual level of research. Joshua, the front man of Lux Interna, defines the natural world that surrounds us as a wild world and truly believes that the wild space is vanishing as cities and suburban sprawl devour landscape after landscape; our personality is being affected heavily by a virtual world.

"The virtual world offered to us through technology allows us to inhabit an imaginal space with a clarity that has perhaps never been achieved on such a grand scale; the other side of this, however, is that it provides us with a pre-structured imaginary, a space shaped by vested interests, corporate and otherwise, which are not ours or nature's."(Joshua L. Ian).

In his music he tries to reveal the importance of the so-called wilderness to the human being that willingly forgets his roots in a constant chase after virtuality.

"...this is one reason why the image and reality of wilderness is so important to us, both in an inner and outer sense. The music is an attempt to give voice to these wildernesses? to weave them together: light, body, blood, sun" (Joshua L. Ian).

By presenting the new album under the name 'There Is Light in The Body, There Is Blood in the Sun', Lux Interna makes a huge shift from the sound of classical dark folk records like "Absence and Plenum" and "Ignis Mutat Res" to the surface of "Americana" folk. I am not a big expert of American apocalyptic folk scene that was very active during 70ies and 80ies, but from what I have heard the influence on the music of different modern bands is clear, Of the Wand and The Moon, Lux Interna, Spiritual Front and others exploit the field and transform it to be even gloomier.

A different approach towards musical process pushed the new record to be much more complex with a high level of orchestration; the artists use a wider specter of acoustical instruments to create a dense gamut of emotional sound. Powerful, charismatic, but yet gentle voice of Joshua is spread all around this creation, back-upped with lovely female vocals of another old timer of Lux Interna, Kathryn. Sometimes stepping on the ground of folk rock with the tracks like "Threefold" and "Tongues", the album doesn't lose its gothic and esoteric charm. A lot of percussive and drum elements are implemented to inject the right rhythm and to set control over the tempo of the whole drift. Those of you that remember the previous albums to be highly guitar driven, today will find the guitar to be an important but not the leading part of the music, when harmonica, flutes, violins and piano are twisted alongside other string instruments setting the true sensual delight. More shamanic composition "Spitibloom" balances on the edge of psychedelic rock and old American spirituals, raising and fading away, juggling with shifting drones and textures, adding more facets to this diamond of contemporary art.

There are also few tracks that didn't touch the right strings in my soul, like "Nida" and "Wounded Stag" because they are a little bit slow and long for my taste, though musically they continue to keep the highest level. But I would like to single out a specific composition under the name "Seed" that I keep spinning on and on, back and forth, again and again for more than few weeks. Lovely drumming, amazing vocal session that doesn't crawl over the music, the rhythm and spirit that captures imagination and makes my legs dance under the table.

Feeling the force of a strong creative velocity behind the work, Joshua & Co. strike the scene with a strong and inspiring album that will not leave anybody indifferent. I am pretty sure that there are fans of classical neofolk approach that will be negatively surprised after hearing this cd of Lux Interna, but I feel that the aim of todays' music is to explore more surfaces and to break even more boundaries without sticking to the existing stereotypes and clichés, whether somebody likes it or not. Great live shows that the band threw during their staying in Europe for a year or so, they prove the success of their vision wrapped inside the magical tunes of evolution process called 'There Is Light in The Body, There Is Blood in the Sun'. Sep 02 2013