I Hear The Water Dreaming is a very psychedelic title. The music is equally psychedelic, even shamanistic. The electronic textures of the songs are accompanied with subtle sounds effects, nature sounds and samples. This album thus creates a dreamlike setting through the intimate sound of the songs. It also has a very organic feeling due to the peaceful singing and relaxing nature sounds.
Possibly this could be called new age music, but it is not as cheap, synthetic and kitsch as most new age music. Oophoi and Louisa John Krol have created a wonderful daydream record for guaranteed pleasant dreams.
MvG
Italian ambient-artist Oophoi, a highly prolific soundscape-composer, teams up for ‘I hear the water dreaming’ with the Australian singer Louisa-John Krol. We can speak here of a perfect match, since the delicate, angelic voice of Krol suits the delicate and tender ambient of Oophoi perfectly. Krol is also active as an solo-artist on Prikosnovenie, composing dreamy folksongs. Her voice reminds me of Kate Bush as well as of 3rd and the Mortal’s Kari Rueslatten.
Oophoi creates traditional ambient, dreamy and not per se dark, in the vein of Steve Roach and Vidna Obmana, two titans in this genre. This genre has some typical instruments involved such as bamboo flutes, rainsticks, windchimes and long analogue drones. My greatest objection to this kind of ambient is that in most cases it seems a matter of quantity and not quality (just count the records of Steve Roach and Vidna Obmana and you know what I mean). These artist do not bother to renew themselves musically, but their collaborations are almost always very interesting.
This is absolutely the case here. ‘I hear the water dreaming’ is one long womb-like experience. The music has a thick aquatic and feminine atmosphere. It’s not only the beautiful voice of Krol that makes the listener drift into watery dimensions. Oophoi’s creations are dense, glimmering and very varied in texture. Every song is a new watery pool to dive into. The vocalist adds a fairy-like feeling to Oophoi’s music with her voice, lyrics and song-titles such as ’Conversations between a wolf and a firefly’ and ‘The hour of fauns’.
‘I hear the water dreaming’ is definitely worth exploring. Especially recommended for all moody ambient-adepts longing for some variation. No mean, cold darkness here, but feminine warmth.
JS