Stephanie Santé: Inner Beauty

san-ib.jpg (18k) Stephanie Santé: Inner Beauty
(Santé Music - 2001)

Piloting her midi guitar (with a small crew of assorted other soundmaking devices), Stephanie Santé propels deep into the Inner Beauty of inner and/or outer spaciness. Exotic audiotransformations will unfold before your very ears...

Read more in her interview this month.

Whispy flutterings periodically emerge from the swirling soundstreams and rhythmic pulsations of Strange Metamorphosis, adding a particularly organic feel to the amorphous main theme. Glimmering with spaciousness and mystery, Instellar Beacon beckons the listener into a droning, shimmering void, where glassy percolations sound like mutated guitar activities. Against a softly wafting backdrop of melting synth-symphonic ooze, electrified strings jangle and recede into the glowing murk of Ocean of Emotion.

Faint heartbeat-like fibrillations thump beneath the radiant belltones and sweetly churning tonal floes of Gentle Speaks the Heart, whispering seductively oblique statements in your ears. One of the few places in which the lead instrument sounds very guitar-like at all (and here only in spots), Inner Dialogue (5:20) features big, drifting slide-guitar sounds occasionally soaring over glistening surface contours, embedded with tiny pluckings. Through an otherworldly Opening (11:18), various soundscenes are visited as Stephanie explores gaseous ambient atmospheres which hover above deep droning chasms, then into simmering minimalism and aurora borealis sky effects.

Embodying a convergence of the artistic and scientific worlds, Stephanie Santé's Inner Beauty reveals facets of many things within those spectra. She definitely shows an appreciation for mystery and majesty in the 8.4 sonic worlds she creates with her midi guitar.

Her website is at Santé Music; go there.

8-4.gif
This review posted September 29, 2001

AmbiEntrance © 2001-1997 by David J Opdyke (except CD cover art, rights retained by original owners).