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Junko/Sachiko, "Vasilisa the Beautiful"
Initially I was not sure what to expect from this pairing. I know Sachiko's solo work can be a varying mix of beauty and ugly, and Junko via Hijokaidan, which is always intensely, yet brilliantly abrasive. On Vasilisa the Beautiful, harshness is the clear winner. Two vocal performances of raw throated dissonance over a bed of electronics, recorded live, makes for anything but an easy album to listen to.
Right from the opening moments the duo are on attack.Shrill vocals, mostly dry from Junko and treated from Sachiko, are brought up loud in the mix.Behind the voice is a guttural passage of electronics, unspecific in their origin but trudging along like a dying animal.The vocals shift from harsh screams to babbling noise, all the while the background noise grinds away harshly.
While the vocals stay rather consistent, the electronics are dynamic, shifting register and character.At times the backing sounds like a broken synthesizer, at others a heavily distorted guitar.When the noise is at its most dense, and the vocals firmly locked into screaming mode, I definitely felt parallels with the early/mid 1990s era of Hijokaidan.
Towards the middle of the piece the background shifts into a great, churning mechanical noise din, before transforming into a massive locust swarm buzz.With a great balance between the electronics and the voice, which has become a cracking, dry throated serrated knife.Dive-bombing tones and ringing electronics continue relentlessly, keeping everything harsh.
In its closing minutes, the electronics go even darker and more bleak, as the vocals finally scale back, ending the piece with what sounds like processed and treated dialog, rather than the non-stop screaming that preceded it.Make no mistake; Vasilisa the Beautiful is a difficult album.Anyone familiar with Junko's performances with Hijokaidan should know exactly what to expect.Just like that material, however, there are times where this sort of unabashed chaos and dissonance is simply the perfect album.
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