One of the best releases of 2001!!!

- Andrew Pechkarou

Breathtaking beauty blended with more than a hint of discord and danger. A triumph!

- Antony Burnham

Reviews

A number of albums put nature sounds and music together and they generally fit one of three categories. Either the nature sound is just spliced with the music for effect, the musician does a call and response kind of playback with birds and animals, or the musician composes, using the nature sounds as an integrated part of the music.
This later approach is what Lisa Walker does quite stunningly. Lisa recognizes the natural beauty of the whales' songs and they inspire her amazing original compositions using violin with specially built waterproof speakers so that her sound will resonate with the whales' natural landscape. Her effort is unique in that she has taken into consideration the seasonal variation of the songs, the sonic character of different underwater canyons and she uses loops and samples to modulate the sound and emphasize the musicality in more dramatic fashion. Lisa Walker shows a deep under-standing of her subject and a remarkable capacity for innovation. If you like deep space or ambient music, this one is definitely one you will want to hear. - New Age Voice January 2002

This recording is as immense and beautiful as the depth of the oceans and the animals she has recorded and plays along with. The symphony that is the total recording of Lisa's Grooved Whale is breathtaking and inspiring. Tracks segue into the next and variations on themes are throughout mixed in with the songs of whales. Sometimes you can't tell the difference between the samples and her playing, which is both reverent and velvety. - Roger Greer, KXCI Radio, Tucson

On Grooved Whale, Walker takes the listener to a place where she has been and we have not; on location to the environment where her whales dwell. The music is as interesting as the process. Present are the magnificent songs and calls of the whale, but there is also Walker's beautiful violin leads and textures, taken to the full emotional measure her instrument has to offer and often played underwater using custom waterproof gear. - Chuck van Zyl, STAR'S END

This extraordinary album is the product of interspecies communication: a synthesis of whale songs and violin, both recorded underwater. Walker melds time as a whale researcher in Alaska and Hawaii with her prowess as a violinist to produce an exciting new sound that uses the mystery of whale songs as the foundation of aquatic harmonies. Filled out by gentle synth rhythms, whale and violin merge as well as shine on their own. With a unique method of projecting her violin's sound into underwater canyons. Walker brings forth a tonal quality that is haunting and joyful at the same time. The liner notes relate the fascinating account of her discovery of this unique sound along with the story of the first track's whale call recorded at night amongst a pod of humpbacks. This album brings a whole new definition to the term "fluid dynamics" and gives listeners the aural experience of a pure human/cetacean interaction. - NAPRA Review

Walker's in-depth knowledge of the whale song structures her music as well. In the liner notes to the album, she focuses on two different types of whale song: the feeding calls that groups of whales use to harvest huge amounts of herring; and the long winter songs that are the humpback whale's epic poems, brought back each year during mating season, always with new additions and variations to the songs of the previous years, and which can last up to a half hour in length. These two types of songs are the boundaries of Grooved Whale, which opens with the Tenakee Feeding Call recorded in Alaska, and closes with a snippet of the Winter Song. Walker emphasizes the circularity of the album with a repeated arpeggiated figure used in both the second and penultimate tracks, but the remainder of the album displays a wide variety of ambient music. The violin serves the whalesongs remarkably well, with the sounds morphing into each other. About half of the tracks have gentle percussion sounds, getting into a rhythmic tribal beat as on Hawaii Gruv, a faster click track inspired by the whales' echolocation sonar on Vertigo, or the climactic primal pulse of Transfixed. The rhythm serves as an underpinning to Walker's violin, which she combines into lush string orchestras as well as the enhanced solo lines of ViolinLaugh or the traditional hornpipe of Boogie. The music of the whales is blended into the plaintive string melodies and mysterious atmospheres. Walker also mixes in water sounds, recalling her fieldwork as we hear the sounds of the whales' flukes as they dive, the waves lapping against the sides of the boat, and the radio transmissions that contrast the rough human communications with the beautiful and eerie songs of the humpbacks.
-Ambient Visions