ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM - All That We See or Seem

""Is all that we see or seem but a dream within a dream?" This quote from a poem by Edgar Allan Poe sums up the lamenting, primal work that is All That We See or Seem; a project conceived between Finland, England, and Brazil. The self-titled album consists of two long-form pieces of droning mysticism hailing from the trio of Gruth (concept, production, electronics), Ellen Southern (vocals, field recordings, percussion), and Johanna Puuperä (violin, modular synthesizer, additional vocals). The album opens straight into a thousand-yard stare with "Myrskymielellä", adapted from a 1891 poem by the Finnish national poet, Eino Leino, who wrote it at the tender age of 13. Here a blank distant droning of synths and the sounds of flowing water hover underneath like a dark river observed from the air. This is a sound and feeling that will stay constant for the entirety of the piece's thirty-minute duration. It is a trance-inducing composition that slowly unfolds elements of pagan ancestry into i