May 5th, 2022

Music Spot: Vanessa Ondine – Your Void

Vanessa Ondine

From time to time,​ we shine the spotlight on one SoundGym member by reviewing one of their tracks for our Music Spot feature. This time we focus on ‘Your Void’, by Vanessa Ondine.

We have written about Vanessa Ondine once in the past, but are now offering an in-depth appraisal of her 2020 album ‘Your Void’ in celebration of the fact that we have added her music to our Soundcoins Store – meaning that you can now use it in our audio ear training games.
 
Ondine is a classically trained pianist, singer-composer, and producer based in Israel. Her work is fantastical and spiritual, inspired by the fantasy worlds she imagined as a little girl but given a deeper, darker edge by her lifelong struggle with bipolar disorder. 
 

‘Your Void’ is an album of dark fantasy – a musical equivalent to the films of Guillermo del Toro or the books of Neil Gaiman. The arrangements are often complex, featuring unexpected twists that betray Ondine’s love of Porcupine Tree. ‘Kill Me’ segues from gentle piano arpeggios into leftfield beats and back again, while industrial sound design elements build like scaffolding around the instrumentation before stuttering to a halt. 

Nimble piano playing underpins much of the album; unsurprisingly, given Ondine’s background. The piano is accompanied by a rich variety of different instruments however; glockenspiels, strings, guitars and synths frequently feature. The most surprising features of the songs are frequently the sound design elements, adding fascinating and unexpected textures; those industrial elements on ‘Kill Me’, a repeating filtered figure on ‘Mdma’ that sounds like a train disappearing down a wormhole, the ominous sounds of a building electronic storm on ‘God Forgives’. 

Ondine’s voice lies at the center of these atmospheric fairy tales. Delicate and girlish in places, it is a versatile instrument capable of real power too. In the past, we compared her to Kate Bush, and there are elements of her vocals that are reminiscent of Bjork too. 

This is a varied album, but one that features a satisfying consistency of tone. Dark, gothic, and ethereal while still frequently retaining the capacity to surprise through sharp changes of tonal or musical direction. It is fascinating to witness Ondine’s capacity to create a world that bears her stamp over the course of half an hour. 

If you want to hear more from Vanessa Ondine you can follow her on Instagram and dig into her music catalog on Spotify and YouTube.
 

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Andrew Tinker
May 06, 2022
Cool songs, great write up! Congrats!
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Noam Gingold
May 06, 2022
Besides being an exceptional artist and musician, Vannesa is my sweetheart and partner.

It's a gift to share with you your uncompromising music-making and life @Vanessa Ondine
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Vanessa Ondine
May 06, 2022
This is truly touching. Thank you so much 🖤🖤🖤

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