Iona Fortune - Tao Of I (2017)

Optimo Music unveil one of 2017’s most striking debut releases with Iona Fortune’s spellbinding Tao Of I; the first in a promised series of eight releases exploring all the symbols of the I Ching - the oldest of the Chinese classical divination texts.

Meshing traditional oriental sounds gleaned from guzheng and gamelan with lustrous tones from a Synthi AKS, Glasgow’s Ms. Fortune evokes a darkly sublime, opiated sound in Tao Of I that’s patently redolent of Kenji Kawai’s Ghost In The Shell soundtrack as much as Sleazy Peter Christopherson’s Bangkok exploits or Dopplereffekt’s reverberating synthetic spaces, whilst also broadly falling into Jon Hassell’s 4th World paradigm, which she recently explored quite literally in the Miracle Steps compilation from Optimo and 12th Isle’s Fergus Clarke.

However, Tao Of I is a singular record, measured with a poise and patience that’s utterly arresting in its stoic elegance and sound sensitivity, drawing on a history of arcane, intramural Scots energies and channelling a mystic, ambiguously gendered instrumental voice that hearkens to Cocteau Twins and Cindytalk.