I have always maintained that music is a form of time travel. And when I say that, I mean that music can take you back to a time and a place in your life; the songs that we are familiar with are full of memories, act as portals to the past. But “Lucente Stella (Shining Star),” the latest track from Katherine Christie Evans, is transportative in a very different way.
Based partly on a medieval love song found in the Codex Rossi, an arcane Italian manuscript from the 1400s, the song literally bends, jumps, and distorts time until two eras separated by the passage of the years are found in the same place. As her operatic vocals evoke the beauty of ancient choral music, she simultaneously wraps them in cutting-edge digital beats, raw alternative rock, spacious alt-folk vibes, and brooding guitar lines.
The results are something extraordinary, something that sits between the ages, that feels at once both devotional, reverential even, yet adventurous and avant-garde, especially as it evolves and fractures towards the end of its journey. It looks both to the what was and to the what might be, taking a 600-year-old sonic fragment and wrapping it in the potential of what the future might sound like.
Next time an artist describes themselves as adventurous, consider this song in particular and Katherine Christie Evans in general as benchmarks. If they are not criss-crossing centuries, jumping genres, and even creating new sounds along the way, adventurous is probably not the word they are looking for.
Discover more from Dancing About Architecture
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
