MUSIC | RECORDS ALBUM OF THE ISSUE
ELECTRONIC ANGEL-HO Death Becomes Her (Hyperdub) ●●●●● Emerging from the murky, fractured, underworldly electronic music of her last release Red Devil, South African producer Angel-Ho presents her ‘debut album proper'. Featuring her singing and rapping for the first time, the artist known as one of the founders of artist collective NON
Worldwide has used this reincarnation to further push the limits of what pop and electronic music can be, both sonically and semantically.
Death Becomes Her is a personal, experimental and unapologetic album, proving Angel-Ho’s abilities as an inventive lyricist as well as collaborator. With everyone from Kanye West to Björk cited as influences, the album maintains the splintered sampling and haphazard drum noise of previous releases, flipped on their head by lyrics about sex, glamour and struggle in an album of ‘emancipation and trans identity’.
Constantly riding the tension between chaos and order, hyper- visceral beats on tracks ‘Business’ and ‘Pose’ sit next to abrasive high tempos on ‘Muse to You’ and ‘Drama’, interspersed with reverb-laden instrumentals. A few tracks on the album are unashamedly club bangers: lead single ‘Like a Girl’ echoes kwaito music, South Africa’s answer to grime, and the mellower ‘$’ is a slice of neo-pop R&B that Destiny’s Child would be proud of. In its most surreal moments, jarring references can be heard to Lumidee and, even more unexpectedly, the Bee Gees. As intense as it is infectious, this expression of new identity asserts Angel-Ho as a strong and fundamental voice in the electronic music world. ‘Get some popcorn and watch me perform,’ she raps. It would be an absolute pleasure. (Kate Walker) ■ Out Fri 1 Mar.
FOLK ANDREW WASYLYK The Paralian (Athens of the North) ●●●●●
Somewhere in between his work with the Hazey Janes and Idlewild, Andrew Mitchell (alias Andrew Wasylyk) has composed an outstanding body of work that excavates, explores and reflects upon the landscape of his native Dundee. Themes for Buildings and Spaces (2017) was a terrific instrumental trip across the city’s architecture, industry and ghosts, and this hugely welcome follow-up traces the coast from Dundee to Arbroath, rooting itself in a historic house and arts haven called Hospitalfield. At the dawn of 2018, Wasylyk embarked on an extended musical residency
there, with a view to composing music for their grand piano and recently- restored 19th-century Erard Grecian harp. Taking its cues from the building’s history, memories and surrounding environment, The Paralian brings this five-month residency to life, and builds on Wasylyk’s original harp lullabies and elemental piano narratives with Fender Rhodes, flugelhorn, euphonium, drones, string trio and vintage synths. It’s a stunning meditation on a fascinating building, and an extraordinary outlook that echoes the area’s skies and nature, its time and tides. Wasylyk’s touch is quietly thrilling and dramatic, but never overblown. ‘Welter in the Haar’ is lush and string-infused yet minimalist, and he holds back on a vocal contribution until late in the album. It’s worth the wait. ‘Adrift Below a Constellation’ is a shimmering highlight: a coastal prog-rock fever dream that walks the fine line
between epic and intimate, and underscores Wasylyk’s knack for conjuring the ebb, flow and magic of the world around us. From the seagulls, cliff-side field recordings and ambient swathes of ‘Through the Field Beyond the Trees Lies the Ocean’, to Sharron Griffiths’ balmy harp mantra on ‘Greendrive #2’, Wasylyk’s love letter to these seasons and shorelines is as bright and vital as a lighthouse, and as timeless as the sea that surrounds it. (Nicola Meighan) ■ Out Fri 1 Feb.
INDUSTRIAL SYNTH BOY HARSHER Careful (Nude Club) ●●●●● COUNTRY MERCURY REV Bobbie Gentry’s The Delta Sweete Revisited (Bella Union) ●●●●●
Jae Matthews and Augustus Muller’s experimentations with sound, emotion and atmosphere as Massachusetts duo Boy Harsher have led them to the creation of a sonic landscape that’s evocative yet minimal in both structure and conception. On the one hand, there’s the clear feel of a nostalgic 80s fever dream with each slick synth refrain and drone of bass; on the other, an apocalyptic future is laden with an inescapable sense of anxiety. Careful is a record that charts trauma and loss, all the while illustrating the impulse to escape at every turn. Opener ‘Keep Driving’ exemplifies this with its nightmarish synth slides and ominous build-up, which leads perfectly to the moody electronics and sultry vocals of ‘Face the Fire’. Matthews’ distinctive whispers and hazy melodies wash over the layers of staccato rhythms and unearthly synthesizers that flood the album, as on ‘Fate’ and the woozy techno of ‘Come Closer’.
Four years after their last record The Light in You and a whole 28 years since their first, psychedelic and explicitly psych-country indie rockers Mercury Rev have torn up the script and tried something entirely different. Singer Jonathan Donahue – he of the creaking, lovelorn vocal style that’s baked into the bones of this group’s sound – has taken a back seat alongside guitarist Grasshopper, leaving the vocal parts open for a procession of guest singers. They’re here to pay tribute to the second album by Mississippi singer and
songwriter Bobbie Gentry, The Delta Sweete, which was released 51 years ago and was a pioneering record; both in terms of Gentry’s position in the 60s’ industry as a woman who controlled her own material as composer and producer, and as an early foray into the sense of otherworldly Southern mystique which eventually birthed Mercury Rev. Every one of the vocalists appearing here is female, and each of them owes a varying level of debt to Gentry for their sound and style.
Tracks like ‘Crush’ and ‘Careful’ create an atmospheric tension with a In Vashti Bunyan – who sings a gorgeous version of ‘Penduli Pendulum’,
mesh of noise that creeps throughout. Likewise, the stabbing pulse of ‘Tears’ reverberates with an ambience that refuses to let up, encircling the brooding vocals with a consistent sense of movement. Elsewhere, ‘Lost’ has a more deep and laidback groove compared to the rest of the album, heightened by its melodic synth and vocal riff, while the beat loops and funky new wave feel of ‘The Look You Gave (Jerry)’ feels more akin to the score of a retro workout video.
washed in lullaby piano, strings and harmonica, alongside Florida’s Kaela Sinclair – there is one artist whose career stretches back to the time that Delta Sweete was released, while Lucinda Williams got into music just as Gentry was getting out in the late 70s; her take on ‘Ode to Billie Joe’ is hollering and righteous.
Elsewhere, there are contemporary voices and others which have gone widely unheard for too long. Hope Sandoval (sometime of Mazzy Star) has a
Careful is an exercise in minimalist experimentalism, with its techno and drone undertones delivering an eeriness that ricochets between each grinding synth line and vocal incantation. The industrial instrumentation and 80s dark wave could soundtrack the most sinister of dance floors or underground haunts with ease, as the harshness of each track’s tone and structure delivers something hauntingly robotic and, at the same time, wholly visceral. (Arusa Qureshi) ■ Out Fri 1 Feb.
rich twang on ‘Big Boss Man’; Laetitia Sadier’s ‘Mornin’ Glory’ reverberates warmly amid old Hollywood strings; Marissa Nadler’s ‘Refractions’ is a swooning fantasia, featuring some trademark Mercury Rev sci-fi effects; and Beth Orton’s majestic ‘Courtyard’ begs the question, why is she not the major star her talent deserves? It’s an enchanting, affirmative, beautiful record, and credit to the backing band for playing facilitators and not scene-stealers. (David Pollock) ■ Out 8 Feb.
82 THE LIST 1 Feb–31 Mar 2019