ROA Records - Jessica Dye

Jessica Dye

Album title:
Sacred Code

Track listing:
1) The Event (0-+)
2) Dark Rhythms (0-+)
3) Back on Track (0-+)
4) Fay (0-+)
5) Catalyst (0-+)
6) Undone (0-+)
7) You and I (0-+)
8) Something Beautiful (0-+)
9) The Sensible Horizon (0-+)
10) Shadowy World (0-+)
11) In the Midst of a Snowy Plain/Still Moving (0-+)
12) Home (0-+)

CD description:
Sacred Code has been said to be "Spiritually Sexual." Soft ambient tones with lyrics that will strike a chord from what was lost within. Jessica Dye's music is perfect for the fans of Mazzy Star, Beck, Bjork, Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan.

Album title:
Blue Prince

Track listing:
1) Absence of the sun
2) Surrender
3) 314
4) If eyes were oceans
5) Harmony
6) Shine
7) Stillness of sorrow
8) Washed in blue
9) Forget Summer
10)High
11)Past dreams
12)Waiting for the calm
13)Jumping is tremendous
14)Clouds are for rain

CD description:
Older material from 1999-2002 entitled 'blue prince'. This is music that has been lingering in the universe waiting to touch down.

Reviews

by Anna Maria Stjärnell at Collected Sounds
The beauty of Jessica Dye's debut lies in its dreamy moods and her hauntingly lovely voice.
Opener "The event" reminds me of the Cocteau Twins ethereal sounds.
"Dark Rhythms" nods towards electronica but done the 4AD way, all shimmery and sweet.
"Catalyst" is another great track. Dye's voice circles round a gentle melody.
"You and I" echoes pastoral calm. Dye plays her guitar and creates a lovely sound.
"Shadowy World" is a melancholy song that sounds like it belongs on 4Ad.
"Sacred Code" is a fine piece of dreampop.

by Brad Burkley
Those of us who make music might wish to be in the place where someone is enjoying our songs somehow, as the "it's great, it's great" is great, but gets old, and tells us nothing really about how our music is going out into the world.

By odd chance I came by this album. I picked up an old friend at the Orlando airport and then we stayed the night in O-town together. I took her home to Gainesville, but first we drove through Deland on a nostalgia tour. There, after lunch, in a little store on Woodland Blvd., near where I used to play my first songs at a place called Cafe Da Vinci, we walked into a record store. Among the things we bought was Sacred Code by Jessica Dye. On the way home we listened to the new Cure album, Future Bible Heroes, Stereolab, Isidore, and the Lost In Translation soundtrack.

We also played Sacred Code. My friend was a little aggravated. She bought this CD by mistake, thinking it was something else. A name and memory mishap. We realized this as the first song played, after we were far up the road, a distance too far to think of going back, way out in the countryside, on a holiday weekend with summer heat building storm cloud mountains and with bikers and fishing boats passing like fire trucks.

By the time Dark Rhythms came on we had become silent. All the chatter we enjoyed had stopped. We were enjoying something else, Dye’s music for the first time. Storms can be like magic, and it came down in a trick of buckets like rabbits, cats, and dogs, right out of the big hat upstairs. The music was perfect for this as we had to pull over for a short while. We had little words to say at this point, as feelings spoke without them, but our conversation drifted to times gone, to intimacies lost and found, and of a future in love, with or without. Sacred Code was there for this.

I love this music. I love music, but I really love this music. For those who need comparisons, think Shoegazing but all grown up, and with the distortion pedal removed. Think Hex, only years later and moving forward. Think Mazzy Starr but with promise instead of dread. There’s something a little Celtic here too, but warmer and easier to consume without becoming liquid. My friend on this day, who has impeccable taste in music I would say, loved the Code too. Odd how the little mistake of a name mix-up led to a charm in the highway strip and a serendipity unexpected as it is by nature, The Sacred Code.

Photos