Orshina – Requiem for “NOVA”: From Personal Grief to Collective Healing
It’s not easy moving on from loosing someone, especially if they are really close to you! The pain, the anguish, the hurt, the emotions, it sometimes too much to deal with that it even affect your daily routines. When such things happen we all try to cope, and music mostly becomes our only way of expressing that much hurt and grief. When you’ve moved on and at a point you try to find a background music for your morning coffee, then accidentally click an album that weighs heavier than your entire emotional inventory for the week is a quick way to trade your morning calm for a deep philosophical staring contest with your kitchen wall. And this is how it all starts again, their memories, the good ones, the joy with them and everything that happened, keeps coming back and you don’t know what to do.
Well I’ve got that album here for you, and that’s Tel Aviv’s electronic artist Orshina’s intense new full-length album, ‘Requiem for “NOVA“‘. Though this is very personal album, released to serve as both a personal memorial and a collective healing mechanism for anyone who’s lost someone soo close to them. For many are walking around with a lot of shattered hearts, grief and pain. It’s an album birthed out of unimaginable grief following the loss of the artist’s sister and close friends in a terrifying tragedy, the project carries a clear, unwavering message built around its central refrain that says, we will never forget. This is a piece that channels raw trauma and extreme brokenness into an artistic offering that helps heal a fractured world.
When I listen to this album, it takes me into the world of Orshina’s creative space where it feels like walking through a dimly lit studio filled with analog gear, mixing consoles, and the heavy residue of months spent working through exhaustion and tears. Evey emotion is felt, with every note, every drum and atmosphere. With this album, he didn’t do it alone, and had contributions from violinist Maianne Tur, drummer Roey Brosh, and vocalists Idit Eshel and Shiran Tzfira, together they crafted an album that blends rich instrumentation with expansive electronic textures, drawing inspiration from the deep psych-rock and ambient traditions of Pink Floyd and Carbon Based Lifeforms. Lets see what each track brings and how much we can hold in us with our emotions.
Listeners are welcomed to the album by the track “Graveyard Blues“, where the mood is solemn and reflective. The track is a 7min long piece that starts with a slow-burning electronic rhythms merging with haunting violin lines from Maianne Tur, creating a vast, desolate atmosphere. You can hear bits of the drums as the track builds up, they come and go just like memories, then finally settles down with you! I love how spacious it feels, allowing each instrument to shine while establishing the commemorative tone for the rest of the album.
“Bread & Circus” brings a bit of tense with it, the groove feels hypnotic. Those subdued percussion work from Roey Brosh underpins shifting synthesizer layers that feel restless and uneasy. The track captures the feeling of watching a chaotic world spin out of control while you try to find a shred of logic within the noise. War here and there, then you begin to wonder if we value humans life at all, or those in power are just using us as tools and feeding us lies for their own gain. I like this track as it pieces your heart with its hypnotic rhythm that won’t leaves you in a wondering state, trying to make sense of everything happening around you!
Does it get more darker than experiencing “Hell In Paradise“? This track embodies a dark atmosphere with its cinematic electronic attitude. You have moody bass tones and atmospheric pads building a dense wall of sound, punctuated by sharp instrumental details. It feels quite suffocating on purpose, mirroring the sudden intrusion of trauma into a peaceful life. It makes me question do people who do us bad experience this at all? Or they find that joy alone? Do they feel what we feel? Do they understand what we go through when our families are taken from us because of one man’s greed? And makes us wish that even if they later repent and go to paradise may they experience hell there!
If it ain’t music, what else can we use to comfort us? And this track “Rest In Music” serves as a temporary emotional anchor, focusing on quiet grace. The instrumentation strips back to let delicate melodies and soft vocal harmonies take the spotlight. It acts as a brief moment of solace, offering a space to breathe amid the heavier thematic storms of the album. Along the road, we all will need a breather and this song offers us that. It says pause, sip a drink, take your time and let the memories of our love ones always comfort us and bring us joy knowing they are looking after us from the heavens.
Though we miss them, but knowing that they watching us is enough. “Dressed up for the Devil” brings a sharp theatrical edge to the album, though being one of the longest on the album. The track is dense and more confrontational, tackling feelings of betrayal, grief and extreme brokeness head-on. It’s got this edgy electronic textures colliding with this brooding atmosphere that pierces you!
“Holocausts and Slavery” closes out the album with a scope from personal mourning to collective human suffering. Massive synthesizer soundscapes and driving drums push the intensity to its peak, delivering a powerful closing statement that implores listeners to remember the past and help heal the world. Just like Michael Jackson said, heal the world and make it a better place for you and for me and the entire human race. It may be a stranger today, tomorrow it might be a brother and the day after it may be you!
This is a masterpiece, drafting and creating such an emotional journey with instruments and little to no vocals at all is actually impressive. This is an album that should be played for everyone to listen, ‘Requiem for “NOVA” is an astonishing display of courage and raw artistic honesty. It delivers a deeply moving, instrumentally rich experience that rewards close, uninterrupted listening. So go ahead, stream ‘Requiem for “NOVA“‘ and let’s all come together and heal the world!
Enjoyed that and want more? Check out Orshina on the links below;
English