Remina awakens.
Created in 2021 by the collaboration of Mike Lamb (instruments, Lysithea, Light Field Reverie, Sojourner) and Heike Langhans (vocals, :LOR3L3I:, Light Field Reverie, ex-Draconian), the project released several singles before announcing Strata, its first album, on Avantgarde Music.
Aeon Rains is the first track to shroud us with its soaring sounds accompanied by ethereal and incredibly calm vocals. The atmosphere darkens with the arrival of saturation and heaviness, but it still remains soothing before the rhythmics ignite with more energetic tones, then Obsidian offers us a moment of respite before placing one by one its airy and misty elements. Riffs increase again by becoming majestic, then they calm down a moment before leading us with haunting sonorities to Dying Sun and its soft introduction. The soaring sounds immediately carries us away, and our mind guided by the haunting voice is already far away when saturation resurfaces to strengthen the rhythmic before giving it a real cosmic dimension which calms down with Icarus Signal. Even when saturation is present, the track remains truly soothing, and although quite short, it allows us to breathe before the arrival of The Endless City’s strange tones, for a slower and heavier composition. The contrast with the lively vocal parts is just more majestic and marked, letting the band explore its influences without ever ceasing to bewitch us, then Ilos places Post-Rock/Post-Punk tones to this ambient melancholy. The track is quite short, and it is with a rather accessible rhythmic that it will guide us until the long Back in Time, an ultimate composition made at first of soaring keyboards and the singer’s sweet voice, then which will be reinforced by a distant and ambient saturation before the emptiness welcomes us.
Remina’s creators had given us the tone, and they did not lie. Strata is a collection of melancholy and sweetness, sometimes embellished by some haunting darkness, but which remains accessible and soaring in all circumstances.
85/100