Folks; sometimes, you gotta think big. And, well, sometimes, you gotta think BIGGER. In the case of Portland, Oregon’s Sophe Lux & The Mystic a solo vehicle for Portland-based “impresaria” Gwynneth Haynes (former front person for a band similarly-called Sophe Lux), I’d say that it’s definitely the second thing, except that BIGGER doesn’t quite feel BIG ENOUGH.
Her super-ambitious new album, which shes co-produced along with Larry Crane (Elliot Smith, Pavement, Decemberists, Sleater Kinney, basically everyone from the Pacific Northwest) and which dropped this past August via the super-ambitiously-named Zarathustra Records, is called All Are One. It’s a veritable art-glam Space Mountain roller coaster that has a little bit (“little” used loosely) of everything jammed in: pianos, B-3 Organs, synths, vintage drum machines, psychedelic loops, Fripp/Eno e-bow haze, all whirling at a million miles per hour around Haynes’ operatic and retro-futuristic vocal treatments and heavy metaphysical lyrics (she sites the writings of “Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Bucky Fuller, and mystics Rumi & Aurobindo” as lyrical and thematic influences) about nothing less than mankind’s ultimate place in the cosmos! (Whew, I’m tired out just writing all that. Gonna take a quick power nap over here. . .)
Okay, I’m awake again! So yeah: today, Haynes is premiering the psychedelic new video for the album’s titular track, “All Are One”, an otherworldly gospel tune in which a “robot shaman” narrator croons her neo-soul robo-ass off concerning the birth of a new and glorious world world, eventually climaxing in an orgiastic, cosmic call-and-response sermon: “We need your love! To help us find our way! To earth’s destiny!”
I DARE you: gaze into this lady’s ecstatic theater-of-the-future and go freaking mad from the transcendent incommunicability of the sublime prophetic vision you receive! Or, maybe I should say: I dare you NOT TO.
All Are One tracklisting:
01. Your Wonderland
02. The Love Comet
03. The Earth Breathes
04. All Are One
05. Infinite Colors of Desire
06. Who Knows What Wonders Might Arise
07. Waking The White Winged Horse
08. Love is Waiting
09. Arise & Awake
More about: Sophe Lux & The Mystic
