FYFE DANGERFIELD resurfaces after a long absence with new track and video Shook, a drum-led slow march beat rhythm festooned with electronic beeps and squiggles on which he furtively sings “call me Shook/what are you?” like something out of a creepy children’s story that circles enigmatically around a theme of loss of identity (“i got so involved in your ghost stories/now i can’t even see the path before me”) and mental health (“richter scale anxiety/what the hell’s become of me?”)
Following her recent album using just unaccompanied treated and layered vocals, KATY ROSE BENNETT goes full on experimental with the sonic manipulations of Dissolution created as part of her time as one of Drake Music’s Artists-in-Residence, a musical journey through grief and loss, to understanding that’s might be described as Bjork and Radiohead filtered through a Laurie Anderson lens and the work of Stockhausen. Constructed entirely from samples of Katy’s voice, looped, layered and sonically manipulated to emulate percussion, converting lyric texts into midi keyboard patterns mapped to vocal samples, it comprises five parts, each representing a stage of the grieving process, based on the Kubler-Ross model: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. She reflects on the grief experienced resulting from Functional Neurological Disorder, a disabling, long-term health condition, and the consequential sense of loss of identity and potential.
As you might assume, it’s not one for the car stereo, but requires full immersion to appreciate the nuances and indeed the wry humour evident in lines like “what if I eat more spinach, what if I eat more fish, what if I drink more water, what if I drink less gin” on Dissolution III. It opens with a disorienting soundscape, revisited on the eight-minute Part IV and closes with the choral/hymnal-like tranquillity of the seven-minute Dissolution V. About as far as you could get from her Songs Of The River Rea, it’s a bold journey into unknown waters and astounding evidence of her progression of an artist not afraid to take chances in the pursuit of her music.
Now settled into Bolan spelling mode, MARC LEMON turns is focus to the plight of the homeless , mental health and depression in the simply strummed Night Shelter, a song written from a dark place with the title carrying a bitter irony (“the gentle cloak of death”), the track ending with a children’s chorus singing Silent Night (www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvxNcrChDLw)
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