The name Ari Mason may not be unfamiliar to you. The Grammy award-winning singer and viola da gamba player has composed music for numerous films and TV shows. For some time now, she's even been featured on video game soundtracks, her lyrical skills lending themselves wonderfully well to the exercise, giving an epic edge to her compositions. But the artist from Los Angeles has also been releasing studio albums since 2014, and her synthpop touch cradled in melancholy has found its way to our attentive ears. Especially her second album Creatures, released in 2016 and just celebrating its ninth anniversary, is a real sonic gem that we absolutely had to tell you about.
Ari's haunting vocal presence, at once fragile, intense and sensual, perfectly matches the ethereal atmospheres and electronic arrangements of her tracks, which oscillate between danceable pop and melancholy ballads. Effective bass lines, a few light instruments and, above all, a proven sense of melody... it doesn't take much more to be transported by the dreamy, dark music that Ari's voice delicately magnifies. The album offers a calm, hypnotic aesthetic, blending new wave, darkwave and minimalist electro-pop, and each track is endowed with a skilful blend of light and shadow harmonies, a duality that is expressed throughout the album. On the one hand, a mechanical coldness carried by minimalist beats and sharp synths; on the other, an almost carnal warmth, breathed by Mason's bewitching voice and the sensitivity that shines through in her melodies and lyrics.
Dim the Lights sets the tone: a nocturnal melody that evokes a hushed, almost menacing intimacy, at odds with lyrics that invite sensuality and carnal pleasure. Next comes Beasts Tonight, which explores the bestiality of mankind against a backdrop of vampirism, a more rhythmic track where the insistent pulse and icy harmonies convey a latent tension, between attraction and danger. It's impossible to forget its heady chorus, which continues to haunt our playlists years after its discovery. Empires is also more rhythmic, blending desire and frustration in a melancholy register. The album also ventures onto more introspective shores with Brothers, which tackles grief and an ambiguous fraternal relationship, or contemplative Sleep Still, a gentle, soothing ballad that alludes to the fear of abandonment. Ruin You, imbued with pain and betrayal, evokes an internal struggle between the desire for revenge and the will to forgive, with a poignant melody. Creatures is an ode to human nature, with all its beauty and darkness, and this multitude of facets is perfectly captured here. Ritual closes the album in a mystical, ceremonial mood. Repetitive percussion and choirs in the background create an atmosphere of ancient ritual, concluding the album on an enigmatic note.
With Creatures, Ari Mason weaves a sound universe both nostalgic and timeless, where emotion pierces every note. An album to be savored like a dive into a hazy dream, between seduction and haunting.
