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Priscilla Hernandez is a lovely spanish lady who creates lovely (fairy and ghost inspired) art. She has a lovely voice and on her debut CD "Ancient Shadows" she makes, as you might expect, lovely music.
The CD is roughly divided into two halves, the ghost (ethereal gothic) half and the fairy (new-age) half. Musically the distinction between these two genres is academic to all but die-hard fans. This is actually a good thing for the first time listener, the songs flow into one another nicely and it never sounds like two albums shuffled together. Thematically the recordings are also of a type. Half of "Ancient Shadows" is supposed to be ghost stories but (as made clear on the front page of the Fairy booklet) the kindly ones are all but banished and vanishing. Both the Ghost and the Fairy are not really here, making the entire collection a series of ghost stories.
If you're a fan of either ethereal or new-age I can't imagine that you wouldn't enjoy this collection. It's pretty and well recorded, and nothing breaks the trance Priscilla has created (except the trite "rock" guitar on "Nightmare").
It's been a decade since I spent a goodly amount of time listening to new-age artists like Enya. Perhaps at that time the heavy use of keyboards, synthesizers and other electronic equipment sounded otherworldly. Now it just sounds cold and a bit sterile. Hernandez has a beautiful voice but she never sounds exposed or vulnerable. The she is too collected and she is always cocooned behind layers of music. Listening to "Ancient Shadows" makes me want to strip layers of it away. None of the songs here are bad, but I find myself wanting to hear just Hernandez and her piano or just her and with the acoustic guitar and flute. The wall of electronics keeps us at a distance. Less like a fairy circle we can actually enter and more like a pretty picture of one
If this is a collection of ghost stories then we never hear the real anguish of the tormented souls, Prisiclla's voice is too controlled. It never pushes to the point of panic like that of Kate Bush. If this is a Fairy Tale then the fairies seem more trapped by the electronic music than by the boundary between worlds.
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Priscilla Hernandez:
http://www.myspace.com/priscillahernandez
Yidneth:
http://www.yidneth.com/
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