AURI: Ii- Those We Don´t Speak Of (ATMOSPHERIC ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

If we had to find some positive points to the world pandemic that hits us since March 2020, it is perhaps paradoxically on the side of the musical production that we should turn since many bands, rather than resolving to idleness because of the cancellation of their tours, took advantage of the opportunity and the ease of sharing music from a distance to work on projects not necessarily planned. This is notably the case of Auri for whom the postponement of the tour intended to introduce Nightwish's ninth album, "Human II Nature", on stage, allowed the trio to plunge into the realization of its second album, in a formula where Tuomas Holopainen, Troy Donockley and Johanna Kurkela also invited Kai Haito, drummer within... Nightwish, to bring some well-felt percussions ("The Duty of Dust" in particular).

After a first album which laid the foundations of the style developed in this side-project, "Those We Don't Speak Of" comes to affirm in a more convincing way a music made of atmospheres and emotions, carried by the two pillars which are the enchanting voice of Johanna Kurkela and the Celtic instruments of Troy Donockley.

After an opening all in vocals supported by very atmospheric keyboards where the sobriety contrasts with the usual symphonic emphasis that we find within Nightwish, the Celtic folk side takes off with 'The Valley'. The melody is beautiful, the interpretation all in sobriety comes to stick shivers in the back and the neat arrangements are suitable for a dreamy journey that comes to walk in the footsteps of Blackmore's Night.

Once again, Tuomas Holopainen expresses all his talent of melodist as well as his capacity to find splendid symphonic arrangements which depict a universe filled with reveries. And this does not deny itself throughout the album, so much so that it is difficult to highlight a track more than another so much the whole is coherent. However, 'Light and Flood', an instrumental track composed by Troy Donockley and which seems to come straight out of the second CD of "Human II Nature", then 'Pearl Diving' which starts in a very aerial way before ending in a very grandiloquent way with an Oldfield-like guitar in the background, or 'Kiss the Mountain' which would have been very good on a (good) Enya's album, deserve to be mentioned.

But no more details, "Those We Don't Speak Off" must be tasted as a whole, offering to the listener 50 minutes of pure musical beauty, like an addictive candy that would delicately caress the neurons and distill its benefits to the whole body. - Official website

AURI

II- THOSE WE DON´T SPEAK OF

NUCLEAR BLAST

ATMOSPHERIC ROCK