Posted on: September 12, 2007 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

What I Want From You Is Sweet is the debut release from Orion Rigel Dommisse on Language of Stone, the Philadephia-based label run by Greg and Jessica Weeks (members of Espers and Woodwose respectively). The album was recorded and mixed to entirely analog formats at Greg’s Hexham Head studio with Orion and Greg co-producing. What I Want From You Is Sweet is released September 25 on Language of Stone, distributed by Drag City Records.

This is classical music set to Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, folk music from some lost Balkan province where moonlight feeds all need for Vitamin D. Orion sings and plays electric cello, Wurlitzer electric piano, omnichord, Univox Mini-Korg and Metallaphon. She’s accompanied by Margaret Wienk (Fern Knight) on acoustic cello, Robert Pycior on electric violin, acoustic guitar, Jesse Sparhawk (Fern Knight) on harp and Greg Weeks on bones, bell, and electric guitar. Orion’s text is a dark, rich blood that oozes through organs, infusing them with all manner of unearthy metastices; mutations which allow them to evolve through pain, survive the corruptions of this world and deliver upon it an inverse of the negativity it so often yields. Orion feels the world like few others can.

On the surface the song-world Orion Rigel Dommisse has created on What I Want From You Is Sweet is marked by death, desolation and personal disaster. That the events populate a fairy-tale-like terrain is no small point. The transmutation of terror and dread into a manageable folkloric currency makes complete sense given the fantastic elements sewn within Orion’s singular visions. “Fake Yer Death” was written when she was homeless and squatting at a college she wasn’t enrolled at (she liked using the pianos and library); it was a small, secluded campus and only a few people knew she wasn’t a student. She says “I think the song might be about how nice it feels when no one knows where you are and have no way to contact you.” “A Faceless Death” is loosely based on a Grimm fairy tale about putting back together someone’s bones to bring them back to life; it’s about dying unexpectedly, not leaving a will so that people you love have to figure out what to do with your body. “Suicide Kiss (Because Dead)” is a cover of a Japanese song from the film Suicide Club; a glam rock band sings it while stomping on people and animals under white sheets. As with the best fantasy tales, Orion’s songs thread multiple meanings, some obvious, others occluded, through a linear narrative of disarming depth. All the while the tone is charged, with menace and beauty.

Orion Rigel Dommisse grew up in Virginia and has played piano and cello since childhood. She moved to electric cello upon joining a very loud band called “Kiss Kiss” (with Robert Pycior who appears on her solo debut). She left that band to play her own music which she writes, “because it’s the way I’m able to be most honest to myself and to other people.”

http://www.myspace.com/orionrigeldommisse

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