I'm only three songs in but I'm finding something somewhat beguiling in all of this, like her vocals are in tune until such point as she decides she wants them not to be, but I'm not sure that's necessarily interesting in itself and I've no idea whether or not the album in general will hold up once the initial weirdness factor has worn off.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 9 June 2012 12:00 (11 months ago) Permalink
I should say disorientation rather than weirdness, it seems to be intentionally disorienting.
Airy and nothing seems to be the default choice for electronic-leaning indie vocalist types this year and I'm not sure I need another record in that vein.
― Matt DC, Saturday, 9 June 2012 12:01 (11 months ago) Permalink
Wanting to go back to this less and less and less. Shame, b/c after Hour Logic I was really looking fwd to this album. 'Strawberry Skies' is magical as well.
― Mercer Finn, Saturday, 9 June 2012 12:20 (11 months ago) Permalink
xp re "airy and nothing"... absolutely, and it's a style which usually leaves me cold (at best) or infuriates me (at worst)... but there's something else going on here which, to my ears, rises above all of that. (This year's other prime example of "an album I rate in a genre I hate": Beach House - Bloom.)
― mike t-diva, Sunday, 10 June 2012 08:59 (11 months ago) Permalink
currently in absolute stitches at how terrible this is
lex otm
― r|t|c, Friday, 6 July 2012 15:09 (10 months ago) Permalink
found this album well-listenable, and was compelled to purchase it after a month of getting familiar w/it.
― Lowell N. Behold'n, Friday, 6 July 2012 15:42 (10 months ago) Permalink
Don't know that they're really comparable, but quarantine feels like oneohtrix point never's latest direction (replica), though quarantine is catchier. Maybe that's a stretch, and maybe her vocals mar it but on the whole it works. Don't think it "nothingy" at all, in fact it's well-crafted and cohesive. Liked the bit (in some interview, pitchfork?) about her trying out reverbed-out vocals at first and then just going w/them dry/grating instead. Maybe just high, and haven't listened to hour logic yet. "carcass" got a neat mbv-interlude vibe to it.
― Lowell N. Behold'n, Friday, 13 July 2012 02:33 (10 months ago) Permalink
meant to say that i couldn't get into replica at all, where this keeps compelling to replay. whoa, "tumor" is kinda hard to stomach, but then that welcome, blissed-out piano chord (morcom) follows up on it
― Lowell N. Behold'n, Friday, 13 July 2012 02:39 (10 months ago) Permalink
"nerve" got that warm, bendy, boards-y, christ.-y interlude thing going on, too. blissed out sounds throughout this thing.
― Lowell N. Behold'n, Friday, 13 July 2012 02:43 (10 months ago) Permalink
this record feels like she's been listening to the latest prefuse 73 pretty much non-stop, or maybe that's just me.
― cock chirea, Friday, 13 July 2012 04:03 (10 months ago) Permalink
i really like "carcass" tho.
― cock chirea, Friday, 13 July 2012 04:04 (10 months ago) Permalink
Read an interview with her in Stool Pigeon yesterday. Couple of quotes:
“When I was making this record, I was thinking a lot about isolation, so it always conjured these images of being in an anechoic chamber or a vacuum, or inside some pressurised tank. Which led to aeroplanes and lapping up recycled air, and the toxicity of office places or schools, where disease is just cycling around the air ducts.”
And:
“I wanted to make the vocal sound inhuman, while obviously coming from a human place. Just kind of stripped bare and ugly, with all of its qualities and all of its flaws. That cognitive dissonance between the really placid, peaceful, enveloping, evolving synthetic textures, with this kind of cutting vocal, it creates a nice dynamic.”
― mike t-diva, Friday, 13 July 2012 06:45 (10 months ago) Permalink
can't deny the similarities to that prefuse 73 youtube, but the prefuse track sounds muddled, where quarantine has a sort of polished humidity and conciseness to it. opening track (bassline) on quarantine always suggests "captain of her heart" in my head.
― Lowell N. Behold'n, Wednesday, 25 July 2012 23:26 (9 months ago) Permalink
I'm not completely sold on Laurel's new vocal approach, but it's an interesting idea - daring, original, maybe not "pleasant" to listen to though. I'm going to dare to draw comparisons with the Farrah Abraham album - not that they're coming from the same direction or even same place on the map at all - but the way that vocals can be used in such bizarre ways, highlighting their ugliness. In the case of Farrah, an effect has been applied to either disguise or embellish an amateurish vocal while having the opposite effect, of leaving it fractured, strangulated, barely recognisable as human. Conversely, Laurel purposefully left her own vocals completely untreated and the effect (to our reverb/compression attenuated ears) is just as jarring. Two sides of two different coins I guess.
― besides Sunny Real Estate (dog latin), Monday, 14 January 2013 12:10 (4 months ago) Permalink
still agree with this comment.
I keep coming back to this album, the vocal style is no different from a lot of Bjork stuff from the Volta era.
― my opinionation (Hamildan), Monday, 14 January 2013 14:52 (4 months ago) Permalink
Enjoying this:
― MikoMcha, Sunday, 21 April 2013 11:34 (1 month ago) Permalink
^ this is fantastic, how did I miss it before now?
― dschinghis kraan (NickB), Wednesday, 15 May 2013 12:29 (1 week ago) Permalink
press play if you want avant garde house piano
― dschinghis kraan (NickB), Wednesday, 15 May 2013 12:33 (1 week ago) Permalink
NYMAN HOUSE
― ogmor, Wednesday, 15 May 2013 21:09 (1 week ago) Permalink
I want myself some Nyman House, yes please.
― kraudive, Wednesday, 15 May 2013 22:55 (1 week ago) Permalink
Love that track.
― EveningStar (Sund4r), Wednesday, 15 May 2013 23:26 (1 week ago) Permalink
The new EP is excellent throughout
― Number None, Wednesday, 15 May 2013 23:27 (1 week ago) Permalink
Oh, there's some background on the piano in this (excellent) Spin article:
http://www.spin.com/articles/laurel-halo-talks-turbulence-techno-and-her-moving-new-hyperdub-ep/
― dschinghis kraan (NickB), Thursday, 16 May 2013 10:07 (1 week ago) Permalink
How explicit a "piano house" reference are the pianos in "Throw" meant to be?Those pianos were recorded in London. I was recording in this studio for a few days, and they brought in a piano in the middle of the second day of recording. It was this janky old upright piano and it had just been moved, so it was super out of tune. Obviously I saw this out-of-tune, watery, evil-sounding piano, and I was like, "Fuck, I have to jam on that for a bit!" So I sat down to play at the piano, and it was really difficult, actually. Because it was so out of tune, all of the known harmonic spatial relationships were completely gone. A G was somewhere between a B-flat and a B, like a quarter-tone up from B, but it also had a harmonic that sounded like an F. One key sounded like it was a tritone. It was really strange! So I was just trying to find these chords, and it was a really interesting exercise, because it took me a while. I grew up playing piano, and it's easy for you to get into these old habits, like I always do this one chord progression, I always do this thing, or I always do that thing. So it was cool playing on this out-of-tune piano, because it helped me find these chords that I probably wouldn't be able to make on a perfectly in-tune piano.Piano tracks are fucking amazing, obviously. So I was happy to be able to make a piano track with a very mean, evil piano. It's pretty incongruous with the traditional notion of these elated, anthemic, uplifting piano sounds. I mean, sinister piano has been done before, this is not a revelation of any kind.
Those pianos were recorded in London. I was recording in this studio for a few days, and they brought in a piano in the middle of the second day of recording. It was this janky old upright piano and it had just been moved, so it was super out of tune. Obviously I saw this out-of-tune, watery, evil-sounding piano, and I was like, "Fuck, I have to jam on that for a bit!" So I sat down to play at the piano, and it was really difficult, actually. Because it was so out of tune, all of the known harmonic spatial relationships were completely gone. A G was somewhere between a B-flat and a B, like a quarter-tone up from B, but it also had a harmonic that sounded like an F. One key sounded like it was a tritone. It was really strange! So I was just trying to find these chords, and it was a really interesting exercise, because it took me a while. I grew up playing piano, and it's easy for you to get into these old habits, like I always do this one chord progression, I always do this thing, or I always do that thing. So it was cool playing on this out-of-tune piano, because it helped me find these chords that I probably wouldn't be able to make on a perfectly in-tune piano.
Piano tracks are fucking amazing, obviously. So I was happy to be able to make a piano track with a very mean, evil piano. It's pretty incongruous with the traditional notion of these elated, anthemic, uplifting piano sounds. I mean, sinister piano has been done before, this is not a revelation of any kind.
― dschinghis kraan (NickB), Thursday, 16 May 2013 10:08 (1 week ago) Permalink