Delphine Dora: A Stream Of Consciousness
Siren Wire

One's first exposure to A Stream Of Consciousness might prompt one to think that all of Delphine Dora's recordings have been solo piano collections, but such an assumption would be far wrong. The France-based, classically trained pianist and sometime vocalist has issued a large number of recordings of a broad stylistic character since 2005, some of them collaborations (with Salvatore Borrelli aka Harps Of Fuschia Kalmia and Valérie Leclercq aka Half Asleep). Recent projects include an album of piano-and-vocal songs based on Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (Multitudes), a concept album with Half Asleep featuring songs inspired by fictional characters such as Beckett's Molloy and Zelda Fitzgerald (You're not mad, you're just lonely), and a set of jazz-related improvisations recorded with double-bassist Bruno Duplant and clarinetist Paulo Chagas (Onion Petals As Candle Light).

Available in a limited run of fifty, hand-numbered copies, the fifty-minute A Stream Of Consciousness is very much a homemade recording, though evidence of such is only audible in the creaks and ambient noise that occasionally appear before or after the playing of the pieces themselves. The fourteen settings often feature sparkling cascades and clusters of sound that are so dense, they suggest Dora's used multi-tracking to create the impression of two pianists playing together, though that well may be an illusion perpetrated by her playing style. Typically harmonious in character and impressionistic in design, the pieces encompass many moods, from ruminative (“An Ode to Infinity,” “I Wish I Could”) and insistent (“Idle Persistence”) to fragile (“Fragments of Dreams Are Only Echoes of Memories”) and stately (“Obsessions”)—and in the case of “Conclusion,” a plethora of moods in a single setting. An experimental and improvisatory feel characterizes the somewhat bluesy splashes that make up “Freedom is Not to be Out of Constraints,” but, despite the album title, the material generally creates at least the impression of being formally structured rather than purely the product of stream-of-consciousness playing. Listeners with an appetite for elegant solo piano playing should obviously find Dora's recording much to their liking.

September 2012