by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Optometry – John Tejada and March Adstrum – return with a second album. Lemuria is described as a ‘sci-fi musical diary – a deeply personal record that processes the year’s events through introspection and creative exploration’.

By way of background, Tejada is known as a quality source of largely instrumental techno, while Adstrum is a guitarist and vocalist, whose parents played baroque violin. She toured backstage with a number of their ensembles.

This time the pair share production duties, realising the whole project in person and with lyrics taken from Adstrum’s diary entries. The songs ‘explore themes of rebirth, loss and closure.

What’s the music like?

There is certainly a wider range of emotions on this album than the pair’s After-Image debut, though there is a strong sense of melancholy that can be felt in the downtempo offerings. Unanswered captures this keenly, Adstrum singing of “another step on the treadmill”, before changing gears for the excellent Never Coming Back, a compelling quicker number.

Fear (Is The Mind Killer) is expressed through a twisted synth line, whose presence is a vivid source of anxiety. Distortion of a different kind pervades the slow and stately Target Practice. Emphasising the contrasts on the album, resignation is the overriding feeling on Antidote, but Bon Voyage promises a great deal more with its bubbling energy.

Does it all work?

It does, largely – with an instinctive meeting of minds that works well. Lemuria is defined as “an annual event in the religion of ancient Rome, during which the Romans performed rites to exorcise any malevolent and fearful ghosts of the restless dead from their homes”. This is not necessarily a dramatic rite, but a therapeutic one.

Is it recommended?

It is. Tejada and Adstrum have a compelling musical chemistry and their storytelling is well worth following.

For fans of… Steffi, John Tejada, Francis Harris, Michael Mayer

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Published post no.2,459 – Friday 28 February 2025

by Ben Hogwood

What’s the story?

Optometry is a new collaboration between John Tejada, known as a quality source of largely instrumental techno, and March Adstrum, a guitarist and vocalist of intriguing musical stock – her parents played baroque violin and she toured backstage with a number of their ensembles.

The press release describes how the band focus on themes of life, love and loss, weaving seductively melancholic textures together with synths, drum machines, guitars and bass.

What’s the music like?

The reason for quoting the press release above is that it presents a wholly accurate description of what has the potential to become a very strong musical outfit. Optometry make intriguing and subtly unpredictable music, cool to the touch but with more than a little emotion bubbling beneath the surface.

When it starts, After-Image sets out its stall to become a quality source of sharp edged electronic pop, but as it unfolds there is actually more to it, as Tejada and Adstrum make room for some experimentation and a number original thoughts.

Chameleon struts out confidently, with a strong beat and a vocal of glassy clarity. Technicolor is bathed in bright harmonies, but the experimentation bears fruit in Falling, featuring Mason Bee, which adds an intriguing bit of bossa flavour with sighing strings. Bee reappears on Larger Than Me, a vulnerable song that asks repeatedly, “do you still think about me?” By contrast the closing Cathedral is worth noting, too, a short sound poem that paints an impressionistic picture of sound, with plenty of echo and refraction that brings snatches of vocal and great, wide spaces to the listener’s ears.

Does it all work?

Pretty much. The only criticism to level at Optometry is that on occasion it feels like their ideas could be more fully developed, especially Cathedral which hints at a haunting ambience it would be great to hear more of.

Is it recommended?

Yes. An interesting listen, and evidence of the musical versatility that John Tejada and March Adstrum hold. It’s a grower, too.

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