The world of fairies is still alive nowadays. We can find it in many movies and books, just for the children. I am maybe a big child, just because of it I continue enjoying the fairy world. But I am not going to talk about cinema or literature but music. There is also an underground musical genre based in fairy tales, it´s usually called Heavenly Voices. This term was created by Hyperium, a music company from Germany in 1995. There were a lot of bands whose main singer were women and they sung in an ethereal way: Stoa, Manic P, Ordo Equitum Solis, Eleven Shadows, Black Tape for a Blue Girl… There is a long list of these bands. Their main aim was the scapism, to create soundscapes that brings the audience to parallel worlds far away from our reality. This is the way I feel it and because of it I´m still fond of this genre.
After Hyperium disappeared there were a french label who continued this line: Prikosnovenie. At this point where we connect directly the fairy world with the music. This label is focused, even more than Hyperium, in bands related with the fairy world: Louisa John-Kroll, Artesia, Caprice, Pinknruby are only some of the bands dedicated to put sounds to fairy tales.
In this point I start to talk about the protagonist of this post: Sabine Adelaide, main illustrator and designer of Prikosnovenie label. The website and the artwork of the label compilations are painted and designed by her. The image of this post is called “Les tres cerfs” that and belongs to the CD-book “Berceuses des fees”.
The painting is a colourful watercolour with two main protagonists: a woman and a deer in the top of a mountain surrounded by birds, flowers and fairies. The intense and mixed colours (blue, orange, green) move us to a fantastic world. Everything is calm there. The woman rests close the deer while a fairy plays the harp. This elements links us directly with Prikos music: it will bring us to that wonderful world far from our daily reality.
I do like the deer with this mix of colours and its special horns: they are somekind of spiral plants much more than boned ones. They are the place where plays fairies, flowers and birds. Nice fantasy from Sabine.
Another point is that the mountain and the woman are integrated: the body is the peak of the mountain, again an allegory of outer world: the scene is in the top, above our real world. And also there is a feminist allegory: the woman has climbed to the top and has arrived to the perfect world. There are many of the Sabine’s paintings dedicated to women, and I like also this point.
As a big child, I continue enjoying fairy tales, I keep on scaping this world hearing music, specially this fairy voices style. If it´s the first time you have heard about this style try it and let your soul fly away to fantastic worlds.
More images by Sabine Adelaide:
http://www.sabine-adelaide.com
http://www.mandalia-music.com/pages/accueil.php?rubrique=affiche
Heresy and Beauty 