Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba
Artist: Aphra Tesla
Label: Celinka
Release: 2013
Duration: 43:14
Rating: 4.9/5
I first saw her at an evening of magical chansons at Cankarjev dom, and she stamped herself on me, burned into my memory as something fateful, deep, mystical, mysterious, elusive and worth approaching from beyond this world, because nobody can ever fully catch up with her. Her name is Aphra Tesla, and one of the most prolific Slovenian artists of our age can, despite her young years, boast a truly outstanding body of work: music, wonderful collaborations, subtle poetry, multimedia approaches, and with electro theater she re-conceptualizes Shakespeare’s mantra that all the world’s a stage on which we perform our theater. I’m still shaken by the fact that one person can touch, rattle and fill you to the brim and beyond so powerfully with just a voice and a mighty presence, and all of that and more is delivered by the outstanding record of a new lineup, a new incarnation of Aphra Tesa Operating System, the album Home In The Zone, which I can easily and without hesitation call one of the best, if not the best, records of this year. Don’t get me wrong – I mean one of the best albums, period, not just off the menu of the local music scene. What floored me was the atmosphere, and then the incredible chemistry of all the musical building blocks, or maybe it’s outright alchemy, that makes the album’s 11 incantations something like nothing I’ve poured into my soul and ears in a very long time.
As Aphra said in one interview, this record was a wonderful confluence of circumstances, of magical coincidences that seasoned the music with great collaborations, while she herself spent two years gathering the berries of insight, the stories that could make the record into a oneness, a whole. What came out of that time is a perfect erotic collage of emotions, gorgeous flashes of inspiration and metaphors that turned a personal meditation into a therapeutic way out for every member of the congregation listening. The world is soaked in fear, anxiety and negativity, and this time the little night music is meant to help us put the world-weariness and bitterness out of mind. Dreams, passion and the flames of life are what we need to step across the Rubicon from today into tomorrow, so that the present gets lighter, less leaden and oppressive. Aphra Tesla Operating System is thus a healing sanctuary of positive vibes, and it enters through every pore at just the right frequency from the very first moment. Raven leads you into a dark forest where we first have to get lost in order to free ourselves from all the earthly shackles of pain. Helping along is Aphra’s resonant voice, velvety and colorful in much the same way as the one I heard as a child from the equally eccentric artist of exceptional caliber, Josipa Lisac. Aphra is self-made and recognizable in her own way, one that allows no imitation or half-hearted devotion to merely hitting the right notes. Aphra would rather soak in the feeling, half-close her eyes, and, cloaked in a mantle of survived emotions, spin into an intimate dance of minimalism with two chosen guests and co-builders of an exceptional compositional structure. The gifted, academically trained pianist Marko Črnčec aka Churnchetz has a perfect ear tuned to jazz, and the sensual dance of his fingers over the white and black keys offers a blend, a perfect fusion of jazz, blues, a chanson foundation and artistically inspired pop, while the whole is nicely rounded out with ethnic rhythms and a lovely feel for groove by drummer and percussionist Nino Mureškič, whom some may remember from his work in Lačni Franz, and who now acts mainly as the mastermind and driving force of Afir Bafir.
Raven recalls a combination of Tori Amos or even the fragile brittleness of Trent Reznor’s interpretations on The Fragile, and the production perfection is the work of Grammy-winning sound wizard Dave Darlington. Comfort has to be sought with effort, but despite all the incantation and chasing away of the shadows of darkness and anxiety, the whole thing is optimistic. What follows is a return to the sunny shelter of a safe home, to the living room, to the very center, inside which you may find it easier to be happy. Solitude and silence, a calm without the disturbing noise of superfluous heartbeats, let the title track Home In The Zone hint at the outlines of Aphra’s closeness, her feelings and disappointments, which, despite being offered so directly, are still wrapped in veils of metaphor. Jazz and chanson playfulness work like a healing plaster on a sore soul. The more flamenco dividing line with the Iberian rhythms of Pojke Indiana then morphs into an intense lounge atmosphere, and the darkened club of a soul sunk into silence smolders with passion and firm grips, proving that the spontaneous chemistry of everyone involved, the musicians strung into the musical loom, followed the dictates of a personal demiurge, creator, god, while Aphra keeps devoting herself to the thousand faces of people as a healer, a shamanic priestess who, by distorting and tailoring her world and life through the healthy distance of metaphor, gives and gives away waves of love, compassion and full-bodied music that has outgrown the chemical short-livedness of jam sessions, and Aphra, in harmony with the pronounced hunter’s instinct she once mentioned and which sets her apart, has managed to set up qualitative frames in which the form is fixed but doesn’t constrain the musical eruptions and heartfulness.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20_swmKixcQ
Palace Of Sin is so easily jazzily mischievous, sinful, completely debauched and seductive, and I can easily picture a jazz club from the 1920s, and despite the fragmentation and the differences in frequencies and shades of color, everything is right where it needs to be. Sail Away leads into the unknown, away from the place of pain and disappointment, with the help of that last green cigarette and a glass of just-right chilled wine. Nothing is necessary, we can all be free and give in to the vibrating call to shed our shackles, Aphra gently conveys and whispers. The sensual act and perfect alchemy continue with the jazzy beauty of Little Star, which is outright erotic, sensual, sexual, and Aphra, with an almost masculine baritone and multilayered kaleidoscopic seductiveness, paints the clouds and evil thoughts of an offended lover or a wounded one scarlet, unfolds silk sheets and invites us to a golden center where everything is forgiven and where a kiss is the main currency for paying off all earthly debts. Passion is the basic red thread, but not a threatening, lurking, greedy and grabby one. Echo Of Desire reflects the more mystical side of passion, and a jazzy ethno blend of shamanic cries, poetry and ambiguity sends the echoes of a longing world back into the warm shelter of a safe bubble of happiness and security, into the zone that Aphra sings about so clearly and consistently. Marko’s piano slips from strict form into a gorgeously improvised solo that calls to mind Pat Metheny, and even more so Thelonious Monk, while with the dive into the sonic sea of blues sounds on Moon Sings The Blues the meter changes completely. The levitations are consecutive, multiple and completely natural, and with every layer shed, body and soul open up more easily into infinity. Catchability is an illusion, and the transience of wisdom and happiness is a call to enjoy every single moment. Aphra is an artist of interpretive escapes into the unknown, and in just the right mysterious way she flirts with darkness and pain as well as with the scarlet softness of heartfulness and sunny optimism, which she shades with just the right amount of life’s tartness, which, I repeat, is not world-weary. Black Dawn Song, with the more pronounced rhythm of Nino’s drums, weaves a more consistent message through the room. What is ugly now can easily turn into something beautiful and precious, worth coming back to. You’ve survived the black dawn, and after all that, it’s possible that the rays of happiness and sun will soon stroke you. Aphra sings a jazz fairy tale of change and metamorphosis, in which every atom of the record is a part, every trembling vibrato, the sweet sound of percussion on piano strings, the touch of the opera, and everything shows that the vault of Aphra’s universe is higher than the vault of ordinary people. With a visit to the refuge in which Frida frees herself from suffering (is this a dedication to the incredible Frida Kahlo, I wonder?), the final act can be contact with that happy part of the soul we took for granted in childhood. Watch The Children Play is the closing mantra with which, after Frida’s cry, we give in to the last act of farewell and let our dreamy child come out, the one who once knew how to yearn and feel, to see the world differently than today, when we’ve dropped all our instincts and become conformist, responsible adults, pillars of society. A rhythmic song about burning rainbows and banished nightmares puts the cherry on top of the comfort, and it can be followed by another cycle of listening and digging deeper, because there’s so much content, despite the sonic minimalism, that a single listen isn’t enough to claim you’ve grasped everything and that it’s all actually clear to you.
Home In The Zone is such a sonically full record that, if you weren’t looking at the cover, you wouldn’t guess it belongs to our all-too-often cramped scene. It’s precisely because of that that I fear it will be overlooked by most, the very people who could benefit from it therapeutically. The world can be a place of threats, stolen and extinguished dreams, but it can also be a screen for liberation. Aphra Tesla Operating System offers a new program for re-conceptualizing the matrix of existence, and by showing the thousand faces of her own intimacy, Aphra holds a mirror up to the world. It’s precisely this directness and lack of pretense that easily help every note and the whole music slide into the center of your heart and heal you, touch you, wake you up, even if you won’t grasp the holistic concept and follow it blindly. There are a thousand paths to understanding, and Aphra, with her universal English diction, detoxifies a world of all borders, while also stepping past the outer skin of the limited being that is the human itself. This time all cultural boundaries are exceeded, along with the rules of good behavior and all the commands that can make you unhappy. What remains is the perfect eroticism of being and feeling, and by fusing the universe and cosmic happiness into one with you, you too can become happy and full, despite apparent emptiness and exhaustion. Home In The Zone is just an altruistic tool that can help with that, if you also listen to the whole thing in an unburdened, unlabeled way. Everything else is just ballast and burden, which has nothing whatsoever to do with music in the true sense of the word.
Lineup
Aphra Tesla – vocals
Marko Črnčec – piano
Nino Mureškič – percussion
Production
Dave Darington
Tracklist
1. Raven
2. Home In The Zone
3. Pojke Indiana
4. Palace Of Sin
5. Sail Away
6. Little Star
7. Echo Of Desire
8. Moon Sings The Blues
9. Black Dawn Song
10. Frida
11. Watch The Children Play
