Orleans, Ela Circles Of Upper And Lower Hell LP Vinyl

Double vinyl LP pressing. 2016 release. Circles of Upper and Lower Hell is the grandest, deepest work to date by Polish-born, Glasgow-based sound artist and composer Ela Orleans. From her beginnings inaugurating a lo-fi, homespun style that has since developed fully into a language uniquely her own, from tentative live outings featuring multiple instruments to a now-masterly command of sound, Orleans has become one of the most consistently surprising musicians of the global underground. The seventh album under her own name, this expansive vision, loosely based on Dante's Inferno but infused with deep personal experience, incorporates sound art, orchestral textures, synth pop and electronic music to construct a world equally peppered with loss and inspiration. It pulls all the strands of Orleans' previous work together into an epic depiction of turmoil wide in scope but reveling in detail. The album documents a far more personal approach to conventional songwriting. The album's massive, cinematic scope incorporates rumbling synth textures escalating into celestial harmonies sparkling alongside shimmering melodies crackling with the sort of pathos that Orleans has made her recognizable trademark.

1. The Gate 2. You Go Through Me 3. Charon 4. Styx 5. Hands in Dark 6. Sensation 7. Threshold 8. Circle One 9. Sunlit Hill 10. Abyss 11. Tower 12. Beatrice 13. Calaphas 14. The Great Barrier 15. Ghosts and Whispers 16. Thorn Tree 17. The Heretics 18. Centaurs 19. Minotaur 20. Dionysus 21. Ring Two 22. Geryon 23. Phlegethon Woods 24. The Burning Sand 25. The Well