Graham Reid | | <1 min read
Starlight
Elsewhere has long been enthusiastic about the music of ex-pat Jyoshna, who was Joanne LaTrobe when in the acoustic trio Turiiya in the mid Eighties.
Although she recorded this album on the Kapiti Coast with local musicians while back in New Zealand for teaching and currently lives in Ireland, her spiritual journey has taken her through the music and esoteric philosophies of India.
And she always brings something special to her work as with the terrific beats on Dancing Divinity . . . and on this new album a lovely amalgam of her distinctive high vocals with programmed beats, saxophone, electric guitar, violin and a children's choir (on For Poppy which also features the sounds of her new daughter Isabel) and more.
She creates a lovely melodic drone in the backing vocals for the elevating seven minutes of The Lightning In Me, delivers ethereal and intimate folk-rock on To Watch the Sky Smiling and the haunting instrumental/wordless-vocals landscape of Spirit Voices features Richard Nunns on taonga puoro.
The love/lover celebrated in many of these songs is perhaps better understood in the Sufi meaning of the word “beloved” given the spiritual import of these lyrics which exude a sublime joy about life, the natural world and especially the great unknowables which remain tantalisingly beyond reach but give her a spiritual compass.
We've probably said this before, but it bears repeating: Jyoshna is unique.
You can buy this and some of her other albums from her website here.
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