If you don’t hear the new album from Zanias as the soundtrack to the next Dune movie, it will only be because someone else licensed it first. With its striking atmospheres and lush textures, Ecdysis is evocative, exotic, experimental, and awe-inspiring. It is a rock-solid demonstration of the immense talent of the Berlin-based Earth-child, Alison Lewis.
With a sonic palette that recalls Jean-Michel Jarre’s Zoolook and Peter Gabriel’s Last Temptation of Christ, the album moves even further forward than last year’s Chrysalis. Vocally, Zanias releases have been powerful, raw, and soaring. From the opener, “Earthborn,” this element has been enhanced and amplified. The songs have been shorn of lyrics, as Lewis’ voice is abstracted, sampled, and taken into the stratosphere.
Comparisons to Lisa Gerrard are borne out on the majestic “Duneskipper,” but the magic spun by Madonna on her Ray of Light album is a closer reference point on “Acacia.” William Orbit recently said that he dreams of working with Ms Ciccone again, but the creative center of gravity should draw him to Zanias, instead. The power of the project has been refined and restrained, so that it sweeps like a sandstorm seen from a distance, and the material is more at home in a concert hall than a club.
Where we really expect to hear Zanias turning up is on soundtracks. Ecdysis is as cinematic as anything Lewis has done. Tracks like “Habenula” offer the kinds of resonances and moody textures that should get music directors in Hollywood in a complete lather. The title track opens with the kind of sensitivity that characterised Orbital’s “Halcyon,” before hardening slightly, like the formation of a new exoskeleton. If that doesn’t add lustre to scenes on celluloid, we don’t know what does.