Dálava (the Czech word for the elusive horizon line blurring earth and sky) is the Vancouver-based avant-folk duo in life and music of vocalist Julia Úlehla with guitarist-bassist Aram Bajakian, known for his work with Lou Reed, John Zorn’s Abraxas, and jazz vocalists Diana Krall and Madeleine Peyroux. The duo’s work is inspired by a collection of hundreds of Moravian folk songs from southeast Czechia, compiled by Úlehla’s great-grandfather, biologist and ethnomusicologist Vladimír Úlehla (1888-1947), which were censored during the communist regime, but now arranged with an experimental, improvisational approach. Understories is the third album of Dálava, augmented by Canadian cellist Peggy Lee (who has played in Dálava’s previous album, The Book of Transfigurations, Songlines, 2017) and violinist Josh Zubot.
Úlehla, an American-born daughter of a refugee from communist Czechoslovakia, has a deep kinship to these evocative folk songs, but Dálava presents these centuries-old songs as a living – and kicking – tradition that radiates an inspired, metaphysical universality. The bold arrangements and the studio tricks make Understories an adventurous, genre-defying sonic journey that transcends time and geographical borders, capturing faithfully the elusive meaning of Dálava.
Úlehla’s warm and innocent yet intense and hypnotic vocal delivery – in Czech (except «Queen of Heaven and Earth», with translations to English in the booklet), as well as her usage of her voice as a suggestive, sensual instrument, charges these songs with powerful, mystical emotional power. She is totally possessed by the songs’ poetic and magical stories. The eleven songs suggest stages of an underworld journey, asking the listeners to «open your ear to the great below». Bajakian, who comes from Armenian ancestry, embraces Úlehla’s with thoughtful layers of guitar and bass work, which often transform them into futurist and often noisy, distorted, and disorienting terrains, creating a rich, transdimensional reciprocity between distant eras and real and imagined territories. Dálava lets each song emerge as a living organism, evoking biotic life and and spirited netherworld.
Eyal Hareuveni
Julia Úlehla (voice, effects, lotar), Aram Bajakian (guitars, bass, piano, synthesizers, percussion), Peggy Lee (cello), Josh Zubot (violin)
