Karda Estra - A Winter in Summertime



1. …From a Deep Sleep (4:05) 2. Covert (4:06) 3. Second Sight (3:25) 4. The Excavation Site (3:06) 5. Transference (6:09) 6. Nightfall (3:41) 7. Fatal Flaw (2:52)

Total Running Time: 27:25



With the creation of television, a good deal of changes began to take place in the way humanity functioned, with visual media soon absorbing the original role of books, attention spans constantly under reduction, and much of television itself absorbed by marketing ploys and convenience that cared not an iota for lighting up the imagination of viewers. Instead, the world has continually evolved into a global society were people are not supposed to think for themselves, follow their own tastes, or, (dare I write it?) dream. Not that the world has become an insufferably grim factory of clones and walking corpses, of course, but as time passes by, the bombardment of prepared images and concepts slowly erodes our ability to withdraw from our surroundings and conjure vivid images and emotions away from concrete reality. The solution? A good book, a challenging movie, something that moves you, or Karda Estra's debut A Winter in Summertime.

The spark that lit Richard Wileman's ambitious project into existence and set the man on the map of the unique and imaginative, A Winter in Summertime is a resplendent collection of tracks that hint at modern classical music with their use of chamber instruments, resemble gothic landscapes of unearthly beauty often, and among which bits and pieces of rock lie strewn wisely, making this the more rock-analogous release of Karda Estra's discography. Perhaps lacking a leading concept to guide its romantic netherworld instrumentals, the album nevertheless does seem as though it were a tale of an archaeological site in which an ancient being comes to life in entrancing beauty before entering the body of one of the project's participants, only to come to an unwanted end as night dominates the skies.

Instead of opting for a horrifying score constituted by a dissonant array of screeching noises and blunt terror, however, Wileman adorns the gorgeous instrumentals of A Winter in Summertime by granting them a mysterious eeriness that floats dreamily around like an enthralling danger at times and like a sense of wonder at others. A wistful layer of gentility is spread across the beauty in absorbing legato sweeps, and Ileesha Bailey gives it a shade of etherealness with her ghostly and distant vocals while electronic and acoustic instruments mingle in intent melodic patterns. And while "Covert" tingles the spine all of a sudden with a plodding bass line reminiscent of Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler, and "Second Sight" moves elegantly along with an absorbing drum loop, A Winter in Summertime is an affair of cinematic scope, rarely touching upon the most distinctive elements of rock.

Karda Estra is a band that lies on the thin film separating reality from ethereal illusion, remaining both evocative and conscious at the same time while traversing a musical dreamworld of vast proportions. Furthermore, A Winter in Summertime might very well be the release that lies closer to this side of existence, as standard rock instruments give their undine counterparts a familiar feeling of tension and spontaneity; something that has gradually been left behind on subsequent efforts. All of Karda Estra's three releases, however, are magic passages to fields of imagination and illusion, and this debut, haunting and attractive in its romantic eeriness, is no exception.

-by Marcelo Silveyra

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