There is something inherently ethereal and enigmatic about the human voice. With all the manipulation and creative tweaking that can be applied to musical instruments, it's the human voice with its own natural cadence and striking range that far exceeds the emotional impact of even the most complexly arranged musical piece. Recent artists like Bjork and Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, among others, have had success with the adaptation and modulation of the human voice on their recent releases. And obviously, this experimentation tends to lean more toward the avant than to any traditionally arranged vocal lines. The process of sampling, cutting up, and re-arranging vocal melodies--though not limited to melodies, it could include even be the barest scraps of recorded vocals--to fit cohesively together is a daunting task for even the most creatively agile artist. To be able to take your own voice, cut and altered, and loop it in such a way as to create something completely original and dynamic takes an ability that most artists do not possess.
Julianna Barwick takes on this same challenging task of realizing her grand ambition with the release of her latest album, The Magic Place. Amid the waves of sparse instrumentation, hymn-like synths and vocal abstractions, there lies a substantive idea that Barwick is trying to convey, that the music of our youth has a substantial influence on our attitudes toward the music we settle into in our adulthood. Much is made of the solemn, almost religious tone of these songs, which make sense given Barwick's known history of spending time in church since she was younger. But what is only superficially talked about is her innate ability to construct memorably wavering melodies from the fractional recordings she's made of her voice; also of note is the creative way that the looping patterns of vocal samples meander around the other instrumentation to form a cohesive whole. Songs like the ephemeral "The Magic Place" and "Cloak" take the already established ideas of intangibility and undefinable emotion and subverts them to weave an awe-inspiring display of shimmering beauty. With The Magic Place, she uses her own voice, and those instruments which best suit it, to create an album of depthless imagination and a testament to the role that music plays in all our lives.
Tracklisting:
01. Envelop
02. Keep Up the Good Work
03. The Magic Place (listen to the mp3 below)
04. Cloak
05. White Flag
06. Vow
07. Bob in Your Hair
08. Prizewinning
09. Flown
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