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Creating memorable music is not always about throwing musical spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks; like any recipe, there are common ingredients to music’s magic—tempo, chorus and yes, a certain predictability—and the best dishes come from the extrapolation of the cook’s own prime ingredients into their own musical concoctions. Having a formula is no more dangerous to "real" music as a recipe is to a "real" chef; the best music in the hands of masters balances an adherence to these rules with free-flowing creativity, while those less experienced either know nothing about the recipe, or follow the recipe too strictly. Boston based trio E comprises all masters: guitarist Thalia Zedek (Come, Uzi, Live Skull), guitarist and inventor Jason Sidney Sanford (Neptune) and drummer Gavin McCarthy (Karate). Their third release doesn’t create any new formulas, but rather expounds on the tasty blend of the prior two releases, honing the skills of three masters into an even finer dish of practiced and precise dark energy.
"Caught" initiates the recipe and the group bands together to deliver their formula of lots of crunchy chord structure right from the start; tight guitar interplay between Zedek and Sanford is marshaled by McCarthy’s furious rhythms. There is no bassist here, but it isn’t missed at all with Sanford’s handmade instruments filling in the gaps. Zedek, a legend in the alternative indie scene since the eighties, makes her weary and impassioned vocals present in the rallying cry "don't be silent, don't go quietly without a fight, there's no alibis - I wanna hear you." And there are plenty of reasons to fight here; ingredients include less than savory bacteria and virii, the flavor only salvaged by the promise of hope and a new future. "Acid Mantle" mockingly appeals to better living through science, asking the listener to "Anoint me with oils, inject me, complete me." "In the back of a lab, we engineer the germs, witness diagnosis man, I can confirm: it's contagious, spread it around" eerily echo current events in "Contagion Model," a model which seems to "synthesize, terrorize, dehumanize, normalize."
Like any good recipe, the resulting concoction will be rejected if not edible, and viral ingredients are offset by the sweet flavor of hope in "Sunrise" as Zedek urges the listener to "regenerate yourself again, start from the end and begin." In the midst of poisonous "Miasma," we are reminded that an open window, an analogy for pressure release, can work wonders: "Open a window, vapors are rising, miasma retreating, the patient reviving." Even "Gelding," the title referring to a castrated horse, can have a positive outcome in what some may view as a vicious act. In the act of castration, hormonally driven behavior is eliminated, allowing the animal to be more gentle, thereby experiencing "freedom at last in the absence of need." The fight is not unrecognized, and there’s inspiration to continue fighting. "Like a Leaf" addresses the struggle of feeling like you just want to let go, but encourages "take your time and you can set the tempo, if you fall into a heap." Yeah, they get it, the chorus knowingly reminding us that "sometimes along the way we break down, yeah...we all break down."
There is a saying that too many cooks spoil the broth, but for this recipe, each member takes equal turns, never overpowering each other and creating a balance of noise and warmth. No song is over four and a half minutes, allowing for a concise and masterful blend of loose aggression and technical skill. It is a recipe that has held true for two prior albums, full of melodic guitar lines, Zedek’s unique voice, McCarthy’s powerhouse drumming and Sanford’s musical ingenuity. The album is a powerhouse of honesty, a trait Zedek has been skillfully practicing for years, and she lets us in on her humanity in the closer "Apiaries Near Me" via the lyrics "I'm just trying to hold the tide, to draw the line."
I hear you. We hear you.
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I was quite curious to see which direction Klara Lewis's latest album would take, as her previous solo releases were generally quite radical and hyper-constrained in their avoidance of anything resembling conventional instrumentation. While both Ett and Too are aptly described by Editions Mego as "eerie rhythmic variations," such a summary falls short in conveying the uniqueness of Lewis's vision, as it often felt like she was quixotically attempting to compose pop songs solely from murky field recordings and decontextualized fragments of beats and melodies. With Ingrid, however, Lewis makes a dramatic and unexpected aesthetic reversal, as she slowly transforms a haunting and melodic cello loop into a wonderfully gnarled and heaving longform piece.
This album, a one-sided LP, is intriguingly billed as an improbable blend of William Basinski-style loop disintegrations and black metal intensity.In a general sense, I suppose Ingrid can reasonably be described as exactly that, but the similarity to Basinski's work lies primarily in Lewis's compositional technique rather than its tone.Great Basinski albums like El Camino Real and 92982 are extremely nuanced, tender, and dream-like affairs.Ingrid, on the other hand, evokes something considerably more raw and primal.In fact, it can reasonably be described as "nightmarish," though it definitely feels nightmarish in an arty Japanese horror film way rather than a "shrieking church-burners in face paint" way.Moreover, it maintains an earthy, physical foundation even as it becomes increasingly volcanic and frayed.In more practical terms, that means that Ingrid opens with a bittersweetly beautiful and emotionally resonant cello melody, but it soon becomes disconcertingly frozen in time, damned to repeat the same short melodic fragment for all eternity (or at least the duration of the album).While the initial melody is a poignant and sensual one, the "locked groove" moment isolates just a brief fragment of slow-motion, see-sawing melancholia and obsessively repeats it for the next nineteen minutes.
Admittedly, that frozen melody is quite a cool trick, but the meat of the album lies in how Lewis increasingly corrodes and distorts that fragment as the piece unfolds.At first, the transformation merely manifests itself as a quivering and shimmering haze that radiates outward from the dense and groaning string loop.I cannot tell exactly what Lewis is doing or how she is doing it, but it seems like the loop and its lingering hallucinatory nimbus begin to increasing feed back upon themselves, resulting in fluttering oscillations and occasional swells of sharper, more ringing tones.As that happens, the low end starts to gradually amass rumbling intensity as well, as each repetition of the loop feels like a more intense subterranean surge than the last.At a certain point, the central loop starts to feel like just one component in a much richer tapestry of layers, as it becomes increasingly subsumed by the roiling, distorted low end while the high-end shimmer coheres into something resembling a structured chord progression.Aside from that, the piece's rhythm transforms as well, as the gnarled, smoldering undercurrent of distortion lingers and lags enough to fall out of phase with the central theme's original pulse.Once it reaches its seismic crescendo, however, Lewis gradually allows the heaving elemental power of the low end to fade away, leaving behind an unexpectedly tender and lovely coda that almost feels like dreampop or shoegaze.
For the most part, I have absolutely nothing critical to say about Ingrid, as it is a flawless, hypnotic, and impressively relentless piece of music with a purposeful trajectory and an elegant symmetry.I even appreciate the unusual format, as it drives me crazy when people release longform pieces that require me to flip a record at some arbitrary midpoint.It is heartening that Lewis both acknowledged the limitations of the vinyl format and found a clever way around them (an important skill in this current period of vinyl supremacy).However, I will say that Lewis's earlier albums were objectively a bit more original and unlike anything anyone else was doing.That said, plenty of wildly inventive artists release disappointing albums because originality and execution are two separate things.My favorite artists tend to be those that manage to strike an optimal balance between bold ideas, vibrant production, and compositional craftsmanship and Lewis absolutely nails that trifecta with this album.
Given that, I feel fairly confident in stating that Ingrid is a major creative breakthrough for Lewis and possibly her best album to date as well.It is undeniably still a cerebral and conceptually interesting work, but those artier tendencies are a hell of a lot more effective when they are woven into a roiling tsunami of visceral power and emotional intensity.I suppose that might be where the metal influence most strongly manifests itself, as Lewis has blossomed into a formidable composer who has managed to extract the cool and dangerous elements of the genre without bringing along any of its flaws.The result is an experimental music album that sounds like it could beat me up, steal my girlfriend, and decimate a hotel room, which definitely has a stronger and broader appeal than any similar fare with a less favorable balance between the cerebral and the physical.
Samples can be found here.
(Note: the physical album has an official release date of May 1st, but the digital version is available now)
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Louise Bock is the latest guise of iconoclastic composer Taralie Peterson, who is best known for her role in psych-folk luminaries Spires That in the Sunset Rise. It is probably fair to describe some of her previous work as "polarizing" or "an acquired taste," as she is not one to shy away from dissonance or nerve-jangling intensity. However, it is also fair to say that she has recorded some truly transcendent and impressively wild pieces over the years. In some ways, Abyss: For Cello captures Peterson in comparatively accessible form, but that is mostly because there are limits to how much infernal cacophony one person can create with just a cello and a saxophone. That said, that limit is considerably higher than I would have expected, as Abyss is quite a churning and heaving one-woman tour de force of cello-driven violence. Moreover, it is quite an impressively focused and tightly edited one as well. It is quite a pleasure to witness Peterson's power so beautifully harnessed for maximum impact, particularly on the album's brilliant centerpiece "Oolite."
This is the second album that Peterson has recorded as Louise Bock, as the project made its debut back in 2018 with Repetitives in Illocality (Feeding Tube).Prior to that, Peterson's solo albums were released under the name Tar Pet, but she decided that a new name was warranted for her cello-focused works.It is also worth noting that this album is the seventh installment of Geographic North's "Sketches for Winter" series, meaning that it was "composed during and intended for the dead of winter."Having now heard the previous Louise Bock album, I think I can safely say that Abyss's ostensible winter theme has not radically shifted Peterson's tone in any significant way, but this release is a bit more unrelenting in its intensity than its predecessor.In general, however, intensity is a defining trait with most of Peterson's work. In that regard, Peterson gets almost immediately to work on the lead-off "Horologic," as the opening drone quickly descends into a churning miasma of sliding dissonances.There is some bleak beauty to be found in the simplicity of "Horologic" as well, however, as Peterson manages to make the descending, elegiac chord progression feel heaving, sensual, and organic as masses of rich, woody tones languorously plunge and swoop.
The following "Jute" takes shape from a similarly droning foundation, but heads in a very different direction as Peterson saws away at a stuttering melodic fragment that is never allowed to reach completion.At first, it is not nearly as strong as "Horologic," but eventually those paroxysms resolve into a haunting and semi-melodic outro of deep drones.Peterson's saxophone then makes its first appearance with "Actinic Ray," which achieves an intriguing collision of fluttering Philip Glass-style minimalist patterns and Decasia-style ruined and discordant strings.Peterson's palette expands yet again with the gorgeous "Oolite," as the moaning and sliding foundation is fleshed out with a lovely and warm melodic figure and a very cool splash of garbled, ululating vocal sounds.Apparently "Oolite" also features some guest guitar work from Kendra Amalie, but I am hard-pressed to find anything resembling a guitar in the piece, so I suspect she must be somehow involved in the vocal-like sounds.Regardless of who is doing what and how they are doing it, "Oolite" is an absolutely sublime and wonderful piece.The closing "Prithee" returns to more expected territory, however, as a darkly churning bed of gnarled cellos lazily undulates in a state of uneasy ambience that fitfully breaks open to offer glimpses of a more radiant and tender piece lurking beneath.It is quite an impressive compositional achievement, as it feels like it is continually dissolving and reforming while casting a simultaneously brooding, epic, and precariously hopeful spell.
As someone who first encountered Peterson's vision in the wilder, more freeform context of Spires That in the Sunset Rise, I was pleasantly surprised by how tight and exactingly composed this album feels.There is not much about Abyss that feels improvised or at all indulgent, as Peterson has masterfully distilled her art into a perfect and concise series of emotional gut punches.Aside from that, I was also struck by how much some of these pieces transcend their instrumentation.Using a term like "neoclassical" to describe Abyss feels completely misleading and inadequate, as the cello seems like a natural extension of Peterson herself: this does not feel like an album composed for cello—it feels like a cello just happened to be the most effective tool for expressing the harrowing and cathartic sounds that were swirling around her head.That said, it does not hurt that this is a cello album, as I have always loved the warmth and the physicality that accomplished players can wring from that instrument and Peterson makes the most of those attributes (particularly the latter).Regrettably, I have yet not delved deeply enough into either Spires or Tar Pet to confidently assess how this album stacks up against Peterson's oeuvre as a whole, but it is difficult to imagine that she has recorded many pieces that can top "Horologic" or "Oolite."Then again, maybe she has.In any case, Abyss is a hell of an album that captures Peterson in wonderfully fiery and undiluted form.
Samples can be found here.
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Spirit Fest is a supergroup built around acclaimed Japanese duo Tenniscoats, featuring members of Notwist, Jam Money, and Joasihno. If an album could be adorkable, this fits the bill. Mirage Mirage is an album for flower picking and bubble blowing, and it charmed me from the first listen.
 
Spirit Fest use a treasure trove of odd instrumentation and percussion to assemble their beguiling avant pop songs. The experiment works brilliantly and yields finished pieces that are sweet and pleasant to hear. The whole double disc album is a brisk walk through a studio filled with toy-like instrumentation, including harmonica, kazoo, idly grazed piano, trumpet, recorder or some kind of folk flute, harmonium, triangle, accordion, brushed drum, and a panoply of quirky percussion. To top it all off, most songs include solo or duet vocal tracks exhaled in a puff of smoke, sung in a mix of English and Japanese.
The title song "Mirage" is a standout. The cuckoo whistle and insistent beat makes it sound like a zany clock that never tells the right time. Plucked strings tick the seconds while folky guitars and vocals tell a story of heartbreak. The refrain of "Mirage, Mirage" encircles the cacophony like the spectre of a lost lover.
"Amadoi," my favorite song, sounds like a fawn delicately stepping into the meadow, while the sunlight shimmers its invitation. It consists of the plink-plonk of piano and guitar footsteps, and a warm bed of stately female vocals. "Hi Ma Wa Ri" is a more low key and contemplative, moderately paced song with a touch of swing to it—finger snaps and singing along are welcome. Finally with "Saigo Song" the album concludes with a repeated motif. It feels like a nursery rhyme sung in the round with all the joy of group singing.
I haven't heard a folk pop document so warm, gentle, and playful since another supergroup I love, International Airport. Spirit Fest's clever and exploratory compositions present as polished, easily digestible folky pop, with an innocence and levity that evokes a sense of nostalgia for simpler times.
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Hot on the heels of our crucial Deep Listening double LP is another essential reissue enjoying its vinyl debut on Important Records. This is the first in a 3 part series of vinyl releases for Tod Dockstader's Aerial 1-3. Tod Dockstader's Aerial series, an electronic/drone masterpiece, is cherished among fans of the artist's work and this first volume is available in a double LP edition of 500 copies with 100 copies on clear vinyl exclusively for Imprec mailorder customers.
15 years in the making, Tod Dockstader's Aerial series is sourced from his life-long passion for shortwave radio. Dockstader collected over 90 hours of recordings, made at night, and comprised of cross signals and fragments plucked from the atmosphere.
Opening with airwave drones, Dockstader gradually allows elements to slowly come and go, summoning an ominous atmosphere of ethereal cloud clouds. Malignant placidity continues, giving the feeling of eavesdropping upon late-night audio activity not unlike discovering number stations while sweeping the dials. These sounds pull you in as their density and rhythms come and go.
Backward voices, deep echoing choruses of conversations flowing under the surface, ocean sounds, pulsing electro-rhythms, all seem to be created via the collaging of many hours of source recordings. A masterwork of collage and juxtaposition by an overlooked pioneer of American electronic music.
Artwork by John Brien (Imprec) is inspired by the propagation of shortwave radio signals throughout the earth's atmosphere.
More information can be found here.
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There is that instance, when you are passing over a threshold, where the before and after fall away and it is only the threshold itself that you are existing within - that neutral space of the in-between, of the transition, that becomes the actual lived-in moment. It is through fully occupying and being present in that transitional space that we are able to access new perspectives that allow for a reassessment of things previously thought understood. The five tracks that make up Everything Evaporate feel like a sustained moment of focus during a period of transition; a longer breath taken in that actual lived-in moment.
You find in the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler, when two colors meet, a bleed that washes out the boarder; a porousness that feels like a fleeting but significant transitory event. The idea of a "crossing" comes to mind - the willingness to extend oneself from one place out towards another. For Atkinson this willingness manifests through language and through the inventing of new stories as a method of reaching across and creating the possibilities for connection.
Spectral drones, gongs, bells, pianos and marimbas accompany Atkinson’'s voice, but now we also find laconic pitch-shifted conversationalists and digitally harmonized chanteuses joining in. As mesmerizing as the narrators voice is at the center of these tracks, it is the addition of other voices that produces the heteroglossic complexities. These are the voices that most often morph into pure sonic materiality; they exist just under the surface of the music creating texture and rhythm while occasionally pushing their way into the foreground with abstracted extrapolations. And it is through the summing of these many voices that a fractal image emerges, at once both singular and plural.
Everything Evaporate was produced after a year of travel and shows. It is, in a sense, a reassessed document of public performance with improvised studio interventions acting to break the linear stream of the live-on-stage temporality. There is a resonance between these in-studio improvisations of Atkinson's and Frankenthaler's paint pores: Before executing the performative action materials are considers, processes are devised and then, with fluid gesture, the event happens. In Everything Evaporate it is through a trust in materials, process and gesture that new melodies and language become available and new narratives pool and find form.
There are many moments within these piece that hint at the sensation of falling asleep while reading a novel - the stories, images and characters follow you into your unconscious but also wait for you on the page; you walk a liminal edge and wander that threshold of consciousness where the book and your imagination become intertwined. As this threshold is crossed your understanding of what has been given to you and what you have created for yourself is obscured, a new space opens up and new stories are revealed.
More information can be found here.
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On the eighth solo album from the French-based British musician behind Third Eye Foundation, it's impossible to not compare Elliott's delivery to late bard Leonard Cohen. Elliott's accomplished Spanish guitar craft further add to the resemblance, particularly if followed by Cohen's final album "Thanks for the Dance." Working as a solo artist since 2003, Elliott has achieved a new aural mastery on his latest work. At the start of the new decade, we face anticipatory grief, a collective loss of safety, and ultimately have been forced to bid "Farewell to All We Know." Many artists use songwriting as a way of making sense of a bewildering world, and Elliott has crafted a perfectly timed accompaniment to grief, offering resignation and renewal with his heartfelt message "Maybe the storm has passed and devastated everything, now we just have to rebuild and live again."
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On the eighth solo album from the French-based British musician behind Third Eye Foundation, it is impossible to not compare Elliott's delivery to late bard Leonard Cohen. Elliott's accomplished Spanish guitar craft further add to the resemblance, particularly if followed by Cohen's final album Thanks for the Dance. Working as a solo artist since 2003, Elliott has achieved a new aural mastery on his latest work. At the start of the new decade, we face anticipatory grief, a collective loss of safety, and ultimately have been forced to bid Farewell to All We Know. Many artists use songwriting as a way of making sense of a bewildering world, and Elliott has crafted a perfectly timed accompaniment to grief, offering resignation and renewal with his heartfelt message "Maybe the storm has passed and devastated everything, now we just have to rebuild and live again."
This is bleak but warm folk, embellished with gorgeous classical arrangements of composer David Chalmin, Katia Labèque's minimalist piano, Gaspar Claus' cello, and bass of Jeff Hallam. The album works its way through different stages of grief, presenting first the opening instrumental "What Once Was Hope" before segueing into the title track. In it, Elliott offers "...cheers to all that we had and to all that's now gone, say goodbye and so long as we dance on," as we collectively experience anticipatory grief of an uncertain future, but press on, finding power in acceptance. And there is acceptance in "The Day After That" as Elliott professes "...I'll seek to grow, although, although, right now I'm really low, so tomorrow, or perhaps, the day after that." Acknowledging and embracing grief empowers Elliott and he resolutely declares that "From this day on until they come to take me, life won't break me or crack me down."
One mechanism experts suggest to manage grief is to let go of what can't be controlled. "Guidance is Internal'' seems to have been inspired from the phrase uttered by Jack King during the launch of Apollo 11. Prior to launch, a spaceship must make a transition from navigating based on the fixed point on earth to space-guided navigation; this "letting go" of the fixed point of earth is known as Guidance Reference Release (GRR). When Jack King said, "Guidance is internal," he was announcing that GRR had occurred, and it was at this point Saturn V transitioned from an earth-bound device to being a space vehicle. With nothing but acoustic guitar broken by staccato viola, the group's wordless unearthly wailing seeks to unearth the listener and encourage a switch to an internal guidance system. "Bye Now" feels the pull of gravity and acknowledges "reality is sinking deep." When things get really rough, it's easy to want to get out of the game. Elliott accepts this in "Hating the Player, Hating the Game," offering "Just look at where we're coming from, and where we seem to be heading toward." Nobody knows what the future will hold, and our sense of safety has been destroyed. "Those lights, what are they, flames? Or are they lights sent to guide away? No way of knowing until we get to them. But when we then arrive, perhaps we will burn or perhaps bathe in light." He swoops in for a lyrical kill by informing us that the game ends when we "take our place amongst the graves like good little slaves, no longer play, no longer a game."
There are many poignant moments here that describe the human condition. We want to rewind, to bypass the present moment, but alas, we "Can't Find Undo." "Aboulia," defined as a lack of will or initiative, can be a symptom of depression or dementia, and Elliott wants the listener to know he has been there, asking "Is this what it's like to crash, emotional whiplash? I know that you've crashed too. I know your pain and I feel you, and those who're just like you." "Crisis Apparition" draws us into a dream, where the dream is entranced by the eyes of a beautiful dancer, before waking to realizing the room is on fire. Like his home, his heart has been "reduced to ashes and [my] soul reduced to tears" but cautiously advises "Do not fear your death my friend, fear the pain that's yet to come." But ultimately, there is a realization all things must pass as the chorus of voices chant "perhaps the worst is over, over now, over forever" in the closing track "The Worst is Over."
With so much collective grief in the air, many of us will seek to push away these feelings because we fear that if we let one feeling in, a rush of other feelings will invade and it will never go away, but by acknowledging and letting the feelings move through, we can feel the grief and move forward. Artists use music and poetry to connect and inspire, and I encourage listeners to let this music flow through them. In moments of despair, the mind can conjure foreboding possibilities, but it can also dream up creative solutions and inspire great art. It's absurd to think we shouldn't feel grief right now.
And keep going.
Sound samples can be found here.
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Saturnalia was recorded live at 9am during the closing moments of Saturnalia festival in Macao, Milan. Also on the bill was Teresa Winter.
Saxophone samples courtesy of Karl D'Silva. String samples originally recorded by JG Thirlwell at 30 Below, NYC.
Oregon Crisis was recorded live at Holocene in Portland, Oregon whilst on tour with Blanck Mass and Steve Hauschildt.
Saxophone samples courtesy of Karl D'Silva. String samples originally recorded by JG Thirlwell at 30 Below, NYC.
More information can be found here.
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Tyyni is the third album by Finnish-born sound artist and musician Cucina Povera aka Maria Rossi. The second album recorded using a more studio-based scenario – as opposed to last year's Zoom, a collection of in-situ, spontaneous recordings– Tyyni feels like a slowly unfurling mediation on the clash between nature and mechanical living, a rumination on the complexities of modern life that begin to unveil more about the inner landscape of the artist as it progresses.
A Finnish word referring to still, serene weather, the title belies a new note of turmoil in Cucina Povera's soundworld. Tyyni represents a more detailed focus on the sculpting of sounds that curl around Rossi's hymnal vocal performances. It's a more adventurous work than Rossi's previous output that goes further into noise elements and vocal abstraction while maintaining the balance and ecclesiastical ecstasy of her debut Hilja.
While tension at the core of Cucina Povera is always prevalent, previously it was organic sounds that were used to counterpoint Rossi's singing but on Tyyni these are often replaced with aggressive synths and distortion, profane clashes with the seemingly sacred hymns. Whether close mic'd and intoning in a loop or in full flight, Maria Rossi's voice remains in the foreground, set here against a more synthetic backdrop. This development builds new worlds for Cucina Povera, a digital environment which brings in a sense of the alien for Rossi's vocal to duel.
For an artist with such a singularly unique musical language, Cucina Povera is continually teasing new strands and emotive tones from an evolving palette. Most importantly, Tyyni appears to be pulling back the veil to uncover an artist finding a synergy between her own emotional inner world and practice. As such, on her third album, Maria Rossi has found a third way between abstraction and extraneous emotion, personal experience turned inside out to reveal more about the listener.
More information can be found here.
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For an artist whose career is almost entirely improvisational, TALsounds has refined a stunning style of music that sounds as meticulous as it does surprising. Since picking the moniker nine years ago, Natalie Chami has been flitting between experimental electronica, mood-driven minimalism, and classically trained choral singing as a solo artist in Chicago. On her fifth album, Acquiesce, she dives inward without constraints and invites the listener to do the same, to lose track of time, and to let emotion dictate what happens next.
Chami is a DIY staple within Chicago’s electronic scene as a solo artist, a member of Good Willsmith, and a frequent collaborator of Brett Naucke, Matchess, and others. Over the years, she's honed her skills onstage, particularly her ability to block out what’s happening around her to instead focus on her subconscious, letting it guide where she steers each song. Whether she’s opening for Merzbow or Mary Lattimore, Tim Hecker or Tortoise, Mdou Moctar or Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Chami is adept at fitting the unique vibe of each concert despite never actually deviating from her music’s core sound — a prime example of her percipience and sense of control.
Recorded at home as improvised sessions, Acquiesce is a fluid extrapolation of her thoughts, worries, and stresses, later trimmed down and reformatted into songs. Chami treats her voice like an instrument that breathes calm into interwoven electronic parts, often leaning into vowels instead of phrases, particularly the tall, forward sound of "i" words like "time," "find," and "decide." Performed entirely by Chami and produced by Cooper Crain (Bitchin' Bajas, Cave), Acquiesce is full of entrancing moments, be it the trumpet-like call in "Muted Decision," the typewriter beat of "Instance," the flickering vocals in "Else," or the alien-like glitching of "Dynasty." It picks up from the stirring sounds of her 2017 record Love Sick—named one of the best albums of the decade by Chicago Reader—and closes its eyes, as if in meditation, to reflect on what’s next.
"For me, it’s not about recording; it's about playing,” says Chami. "It's therapeutic, but sometimes I feel more weighted after I finish. It's like playing gets me to confront whatever I'm thinking about, even if I don't always find an answer."
The clearest example of improvisational healing in real time is "No Rise," an overlap of aquatic keys and shimmering synth trills. "No rise / there is no rise, I say / I'm breathing by my strength," she sings, repeating the phrase as if slowly counting down. "Breath is what gets you through anxiety attacks. Even when you feel your weakest, you’re able to find some control," explains Chami. "It's weird to read the lyrics afterwards and see what I said, because when I'm in the moment, I don't always realize what I need to say until after I've said it."
TALsounds made a name for herself within Chicago’s DIY electronic scene for her innate sense of feeling, flow, and fascination. With Acquiesce, she demonstrates not just how hypnotic her music is or how stirring her vocal range is, but how these two combine naturally for her as an improvisational artist — and she's poised to break out nationally because of that.
Acquiesce will be released on vinyl and digital formats on May 22, via NNA Tapes.
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