The world of science fiction provides great opportunities for exploring the human condition. Setting your characters against the cold unknown of space throws their dramas, emotions and mammalian makeup into sharp relief.
On Moon Milk, based on Italo Calvino’s short story collection The Cosmicomics, Lisa Conway, aka L CON, masterfully employs the backdrops of space and early Earth to look at relationships, time, evolution and creation, using vivid poetry and stunning arrangements that marry electronic and acoustic elements.
You don’t need to be familiar with Calvino’s collection to enjoy Moon Milk, but a peek into the premise of each of the 12 stories makes the record more fascinating and the narratives – not all dominated by humans, but some by molluscs and dinosaurs – even more affecting.
Moon Milk’s instrumentation juxtaposes the sometimes cold nature of electronic instruments on a song like the pulsing A Sign In Space against a stark, ancient-sounding ballad like Without Colours, which is nearly a cappella until the woodwinds come in. Conway makes the medium the message.
Almost always, though, these contrasts are illustrated all at once within a song, like Form Of Space, employing drum machines, synths, strings and more to conjure the desolation of a man falling through space in a parallel path with a woman he loves, yet he is never able to reach out and touch her. Sweeping finale The Spiral is the album’s most unabashedly beautiful moment.
It’s a challenging listen, weighty and far more satisfying as a whole than in parts. But the payoff is an open door to new worlds and ways of thinking.
Top track: The Spiral
L CON play a record release show on October 15 at the Monarch.
