My Review: Ethica - Aether

Ethica - Aether

Let us take the mind and bring it to the Russian glacier, where clouds are harmonious advancing silences, and space a collector of musical textures in search of a mental airport. The passport we need must testify to our ability to separate reality and the dreamlike polar circle, with the latter as the sole interest, the protagonist of our engagement. We are here to talk about a band capable of performing miracles, pressing history and making it become a vast meadow on the bare skin of ice. Intense textures, engaging rhythms and soaring guitars are the foundation on which a voice that is the daughter of enchanting angels is based. They come from Nizhny Novgorod, a city in the heart of central Russia, and it could not be otherwise as everything vibrates within such a needy organ and their sound creatures come from there. They are brushstrokes of lively interactions with the dominant transport of music that changes the reality of gravity to separate us from the everyday and sit next to the sound. Shoegaze and dream pop epicenters allow the participation of a pop educated to containment, yet managing to generate involvement: a rare affair, the surprise in noticing vertices and oscillations kissing to make these eight songs become heavenly rivers. What sends pleasant shivers running is the band's willingness to create continuous weaves, within clear stylistic trajectories but always willing to not necessarily want to limit their work in one musical genre. And so we often find ourselves with the feeling of listening to a myriad of references that seem to want to escape recognition, to find the system of a different and respected identity. An intense, fast, dreamy and deep album, with arpeggios, snaps, fluorescent trails to make us smile, tenderize, dance and then deliver us, as a regal gift, the feeling of having seen the rain become a collection of kisses and hugs. If their propensity to connect the 1990s to the present day is tangible, equally visible is their mental factory determined to seek out arrangements (once one might have assumed the word arrangements) to leave the songs free to follow impulses far from the restrictive confines of styles and genres that would stifle these impulses that are by no means adolescent. The sound reveals a connection to the world, an inhabiting of distance from the country of origin that perhaps does not like this European-American contamination. They might even come from a planet illuminated by an unquestionable state of grace. Fresh, talented, these boys write a letter to the Goddess of Beauty: songs like a soul kiss to a world that has forgotten to dream...

Alex Dematteis

Musicshockworld

Salford

20th November 2023

ALBUM OF THE YEAR 2023 N. 3

https://ethica.bandcamp.com/album/aether?search_item_id=2917726266&search_item_type=a&search_match_part=%3F&search_page_id=2978194855&search_page_no=0&search_rank=2&logged_in_mobile_menubar=true