Having only gotten to know her music through the Minecraft & Celeste soundtracks, Ive set out to hear Lena Raine's voice through her own lens on this debut album release after the remarkable music of Celeste. Its a high bar of comparison but as a solo artists expressing her own vision, Oneknowing is a comparatively ephemeral experience. Distorting time with its dreamy pace, the soft Ethereal tone has much of the gentle music drifting through lofty ambiences of thick, lush, airy synths. Its the framework for a small variety of ideas in rotation that make up the track listing.
The excitement croons when Lena brings in her remarkable percussive grooves. They rock and rattle with subdued momentum on the back of rather harsh and sharp drum and glitched sounds. The mix is magical and births many of my favorite moments as one is snapped out of the inertia and into the power of her beats. A subtle alternative element at play is the inclusion of strings, in more classical leaning tones which tend to build up with a Post-Rock like growth. A stead swelling which ends up at unexpected intensities in comparison to the songs humble beginnings.
The third of three elements that caught my ear is her voice, something I'm not sure she used on Celeste. I've got to be blunt and say it caught me off guard. She sings with a quite timid and fray tenderness, hinging on either a foreign language or vocal inflections that make he presence wordless and rather shy emotionally. Its an odd performance, possibly all to flat in tone and power as she meagerly drifts into a songs with lots of reverb and effects to carry it through. I like the end result but get a feeling she might be making up for lost ground in some capacity.
Blown away by her other contributions, this solo experience has a mix of that exceptionalism and a more typical Ambient experience which mirrors many sounds Ive heard in recent years. When her music breaks the mold of that softness, like on Insomnia and Momodani, it feels very unique. Along with that I get the distinct feeling the music is packaged through the lens of a story, as if shifting from scene to scene in a computer game. Oneknowing is a strong album but time will tell just how much.
Rating: 7/10