The last time I immersed myself in Lisa Bella Donna’s otherworldly ambient music, it was while riding in a car maneuvering the West coast mountain roads from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon. It was when the gigantic, gorgeous red and orange mountains first made contact with my eyesight over a hill through our route. The layers of the hills were beautiful; almost as if they were building upon themselves in real time. Extensive skylines lent a perfect playground for the landscapes of mountains, like seeing the delicate laminations and interior stratums of an exquisite cake.

West Coast mountainscapes remind me of the idea of worlds building upon pre-existing worlds, which is exactly what Lisa Bella Donna’s music always brings me to a point of visualizing. In one way or another. The type of magic that comes through in Lisa’s music is different from record to record. But trust that synthesis is always present. When you look at the past few releases from the forward-thinking electronic musician, you’ll find there is sorcery in collaboration (A Mourning Light), in intimate, ever-changing textures (Moogmentum), and in the eye of a storm (The World She Wanted). 

Whenever I find myself lost and incapable of making any decision, the music I’m most attracted to is of the ambient drone nature. Lisa Bella Donna is a master of this subgenre; a commander of opening up soundscapes in order to get listeners to reflect on current thinking patterns and then reassess the chaos in their life. The first half of Electronic Voyages certainly gets you in the mood for the former, with its low frequencies that go well with a nightcap stroll. Like most of Lisa’s work, the synthesis of building and breaking down is expertly present on each of the four tracks. 

At many points on “Metempsychosis,” it sounds as if Lisa Bella Donna is stretching out a yo-yo toy stick over grandiose synths. During the 13-minute album closer “Cosmotopia,” we’re brought back to the apocalyptic trickling synths that greeted us on “Double Image.” We also hear the influence of westerns, in which Bella Donna uses her synth arsenal to almost imitate the sounds of a classic standoff. The dark ambiance of the two aforementioned tracks comes already suited for the big screen.

Electronic Voyages by Lisa Bella Donna

There are a handful of pieces in LBD’s field of work that reference the word “voyages.” Most of the experimental musician’s works that do, however, don’t match the laid-back pensiveness of Electronic Voyages. The tracks take a bit to build to their climatic, blending nature. Warpy, spaceship synths sprinkled around twinkling, dancing distortions and a low frequency that ebbs and flows throughout the first of three 13-minute tracks never overpower but are always present. Synths come down like a slowly trickling waterfall, letting all sounds in between pass through it. 

Listening to Lisa Bella Donna’s work is akin to putting your mind through an auditory kaleidoscope; it never stops opening up worlds upon itself. Each track isn’t an adventure of its own volition but is moreso a part of a whole journey. While “Double Image” doesn’t entirely get us to a point of climax, it’s in its progression and the progressiveness of the next two tracks, “Inner Space” and “Metempsychosis,” that we start to get a true sense of how interconnected the cosmoi created by Bella Donna are. 

You could look in any direction in a state like Arizona and be witness to some of the most magical, natural layering you’re ever set eyes on. The mountain ranges, cacti, power lines, and skyscraper buildings are just a handful of natural accessories that have this sense of creating dystopian filters to chop apart the sky. Listening to Lisa Bella Donna’s music captures a similar feeling. At the time when I was visiting the Grand Canyon last year, the gorgeously strenuous A Mourning Light was the soundtrack I found myself most coming back to the most and getting lost in during my trip in late 2021. Just peering at the massive craters and mountains evoked a sense of wanting to be lost. When trying to find our groove in the world, feeling misplaced is often an emotion that must be delved into first before sorting out personal trauma. 

As much as the rocky terrain of the West Coast opened my mind to the idea of being lost and accepting it, Lisa Bella Donna’s music has been there to both stretch and sort out those personal issues that are a side effect. This year, I’ve found Electronic Voyages to be the LBD release to quell my anxiety when life gets loud.