Aïsha Devi DNA Feelings Houndstooth | The Electro Review

Aïsha Devi
DNA Feelings
Houndstooth Records
TBR: May 11th


World music and electronica clubland pioneer Aïsha Devi returns to the album section with DNA Feelings. A dualistic medley of sounds crafted in honour of science, spirit, and personality, the release places this sensational Swiss soundsmith on the centrefold. Aïsha's Nepalise-Tibetan heritage mingled with her European grooming and nurture join in a celebratory collision of inner world and its outward expression. Eleven individually mastered tracks sit tight on this artistic and nutritious serving of sound.


Enchanting vocal opens the album, evenly spaced with pauses of nothing, creating a vibrancy within the anticipation. As the expressive voice matures and expands through its first moments, it pulls in industrial and scraping percussive pangs from the sidelines. A shift in mood pierces the drum skin as effected melodic voice begins to paint a layered image against subtly growing underscores. Echoline atmospheres shimmer with reverberating glow as fathoms of sound craft ever evolving distances between each other. Again, a mood swing adjusts the pace as the track draws to a close. Space age whistles and computerisations move slowly against a blanket of night. DNA ☤ ∞ promises a hypnotic and enthralling journey of music.


Dislocation of the Alpha carries a sense of post modernism, archaic horns curdle in a throw of mystery while spoken word and experimental vox bring out abstract images. Oddly conforming subtle percussions give a backbone to this mixing pot of emotion and indulgent sonic wanderings. As it slowly glides past and over the nearby horizon, DNA Feelings begins. More vocals crest from the waveform in pockets of rich personality and humming warmth. Synths which bounce from watery beginnings start to draw melodies which form ever changing drifts and spring. Relaxing droplets of notation resonate with ripples of intent, expanding into the void which glows in the mountainous soundscape.


A new found energy pushes through the oriental styled ambience of before. Deep and resounding, an expanse of passages and gapes create a network of semi-solid resting points between palpitations of interesting sonic expression. A tune with an inhaling quality starts to grow like a balloon within the spaces, almost drowning out the previous layer. As it builds to breaking point, all falls silent for a brief intermission. Hyperlands takes us to a distant field, sunlit and well tende yet strange and new. Suddenly the tranquil environment is torn apart by the massive cacophony of an engine. As quickly as it arrived, it disappears again. A lack of Doppler effect gives it a spooky and haunting quality which is validated by the choice of synth and the slow melody.


Inner State of Alchemy takes a dancefloor direction and throws us in a siren based deepend, full of magnetism and energy. It soon dissipates into ambient and abstract vocals which muse on secret thoughts. Bringing new directions with voiced song, looped and layered into expanding bubbles in the silence, the anticipated return to the energetic side of the track snaps everything into some kind of order. It's over all too soon, and just as we learn how it all fits together everything alters once more.


Harmonised vocals sing in the new number, a sludgy yet classically enjoyable synth stab gives rhythm and new layers of sound continually add momentum. An arpeggiating shrillness with increasing intensity draws the track into ever higher areas of sky while organic and interesting instruments anchor the kite to Earth. The experimental edge is sharpened as the album progresses, ambient and relaxing drones of emotion are matched with sporadic and loose flurries which keep the music continually on its feet. As Genesis of Ohm meets the halfway mark, the mixed sensations of sound suddenly break into oceansong, the sound of natural waves ending the track in peace.


Time (Tool) is a simple speech, made by a machine, talking about what we are in spiritual terms. Whether we take the word of a robot about the most intimate of secrets is perhaps the real question here. It's a good job the spirit is one of entertainment. Time Is The Illusion of Solidity takes a nod towards the notion of quantum reality and links it with spiritual thought. The electronic voice continues to describe its vision for humanity, we're invited to listen while space sounds and bells resonate through the brief age of track ten.


We end the journey with a high end gambol through seemingly eternal fields, blades of sound join the sky like giant grasses while watery backdrops begin to close in and wash the scene with beauty. This artistic album makes no excuses and does something so fresh and different that it's hard to put a defining word behind it. It's an electronically produced album yet with the instrument of human voice taking the centre stage, a truly unique distinction.  

Buy/Preorder DNA Feelings on Amazon UK 

​and Amazon US