I don’t know what is the secret of Susi O’Neil – Hypnotique.
I would want to turn her some questions, about which drawer she opened, the magical coffer containing an obscure recipe that she found for being able to compose a work so unusual and charming like this The Hanging Garden .
I know she’s a theremin specialist, complex and fascinating vintage electronic instrument to play with movements of the hands (around its
aerials) famous for those ethereal sounds, played here with a great skill.
Not only some sort of strange and bizarre special effects but a component amalgamated with the others inside a deep and Romantic mood – in the right sense of this word – gothic and dark, into its kernel, Susi’s voice, filtrated, enclosed into a dramatic spoken word is mesmerising, magnetic, enchanting, like an induced trance, gliding sounds between the trip hop jazz ("King Never Die"), oblique cabaret ("Deja&vu"), ethereal atmospheres ("We Will Fight Them on the Beaches"), instrumentals, until the lunar and dreaming saxophone of "Dear Diana".
Noir cabaret or some sort of bizarre experimental-gothic ? It is not important the right definition about the music of a total artist like Hypnotique. It is instead necessary to hear note by note, word by word because every new listening will be able to bear other shades, lost gleams strange glitters, progressive sliding of the unconscious.
These songs have something of magic, arcane, sometimes like a refulgent Byzantine mosaic or the transparency of a lake hidden by trees, otherwise the gloom of a mystery, a dreadful secret, closed behind the door.
This music is sacred and profane at the same time, antique and futuristic;
evanescent and fearful, remarking the thin line on the border between dream and nightmare. A magnificent work.
www.hypnotique.net
www.myspace.com/misshypnotique