Katie Gately

It may be more accessible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdVLd521mDk

Holy shit, that's great. I was excited for it already (the Tlaotlon split is one of my favorite records of the past few years) but that is something else entirely.

>>> new album out today <<<

Anyone else hearing a bit of a residents ca. freak show vibe on this? Those synths playing in mystery music mode, some of the voice treatments too

was actually a bit spooked by it on my twilight walk home through the woods

Really enjoyable record though, even if its not as way out-there as the earlier stuff

Yeah this was great fun! I'd say it's mostly very good if not as mindblowing as Pipes or Pivot, with the occasionally annoying flourish. I mean, I'm generally in favour of artists trying to be annoying and Gately self-confessedly ramps up the weird jarring sounds thing here, but what I find occasionally annoying isn't this so much as her readings of Pop and What Pop Does. Nonetheless, it's unlike much else, and my quibbles are minor. Really worth hearing.

I mean, in two weeks I'll probably declare this the Best Thing Ever

what I find occasionally annoying isn't this so much as her readings of Pop and What Pop Does.

And so speaketh imago. \o\lol/o/

(I haven't had a chance to listen to the album yet, I liked the preview track I heard but do worry it might fall *too* much into accessibility. Residents comparison definitely piques my interest, though.)

disclaimer: i probably haven't listened to the residents in ~20 years so that comparison might be total horseshit

another thing: there's very much a soundtracky quality to the music - not only can you totally imagine strange, phantasmagorical visuals for most of the songs, but on the first few listens i almost felt i was only getting half the story from listening to the music, i wanted to see what was going on. only option is to listen harder i guess

ha fair enough! anyway yeah i'll give this loads more listens and try to work out what's being synaesthetically presented

in fact this is getting better with every listen

yes in fact I renounce initial criticisms - this is wonderful

The record comes with the lyrics but they're printed semi-randomly on a 2' x 3' poster so for the purposes of navigation it's like trying to read a map in a gale

This album is an incredible rush. It's been a while since I've heard a record that made me want to immediately play the whole thing back-to-back on repeat, but that's what I've done four times in a row now.

still not sure quite what to make of this yet, but I'm enjoying not getting it

Just found out about this album this week. Really loving it. Very industrial and much more accessible than I was expecting

omgggggggg how have I never listened to this artist before. "Pivot" and this new album are destroying me.

I forgot I hadn't heard it when I last posted itt. Have now of course, bloody love it.

Glad Tim's catching up with this, the s/t record on Public Information is also a must.

I am obsessed with this album. It hits each and every one of my "more is more is more" maximalist buttons.

If it's a "pop" album, it's pop in the sense of The Dreaming, or Laika's Silver Apples from the Moon and Moonshake's The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow and Pram's Helium, or New Kingdom's Paradise Don't Come Cheap, or (the better parts of) The Knife's Shaking The Habitual or more uptempo parts of Bjork's Medulla: forcibly harnessing cacophony to pop forms, though I'd describe it as more exacting and extreme than any of those in the lengths it goes.

There's a moment in "Sift" - you know it when it arrives - when Gately sculpts this moment of build - inversion - explosion which is as impressive an example of the manipulation of "pop" (in the broadest sense") sonic dynamics as I can think of.

I want to know what Matt DC and Dan Perry and the Lex think of this record too.

This is probably my AOTY, I'm realising.

team tim / team imago SONIC MELD (more the case every year tbf)

'sift' is an amazing composition yeah :) nice little write-up

"Tuck" sounds like Annie to me. Have to hear the whole album as that song unconvinced me, but the praise on the thread is encouraging.

"Tuck" is, I suppose, the most "pop" song here, but even then only in a relative sense, and in context I think it takes on more of the dark vibe of the album than it may in isolation - her "Peek-A-Boo" perhaps.

I could come up with potentially dubious points of comparison for this album but they'd typically be theatrical nineties stuff (Ruby? The electronic parts of Tori Amos' late nineties work?) rather than 00s stabs at "perfect" pop.

Another reference point for me would be HEALTH's 'Death Magic' from last year.

this album is magnificent

this isn't a precise comparison but the turn toward doom metal at the end reminds me of portishead's third

also i'm listening to this record hungover which is the most masochistic thing i've done in ages but it works really well this way too

Seems like a weird time to be hungover, for what it's worth.

But hey, no judgment either.

office holiday parties kill, miko

Coffee and crullers. And Katie Gately.

Fucking good album

This gets better the more I spin it. Will make my EOY list easy.

Re contemporary reference points Empress Of venns with this well. Not yet into anything on the album quite as much as 'Tuck' though.

"Sift" is brazen experimental pop at its best. The closest analog I can think to this is Wendy Carlos' "Beauty in The Beast" by Wendy Carlos. She did a similar thing where she approached the funhouse of pop music through an esoteric lense.

^ sorry for double mention up there

Wendy Carlos Wendy

I actually get a Tool/Maynard vibe on the title track.

Love this album. 'Lift' is the best use of an eski bassline in ages.

There are some fun videos on the Ableton site about how she uses field recordings in her work:

https://www.ableton.com/en/blog/katie-gately-sampling-her-world/

Color really holds up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3z4VwHin98

she's back, in longform

yeah I heard the other day, liked it. i mean it takes her nine and a half minutes to get to the really good stuff but I guess that's the point

Fucking hell yes. Totally forgot about her! Thanks for this.

I think the “takes her nine and a half minutes to get to the really good stuff” structure basically reflects her approach on “Pivot” and it works here for the same reasons it worked there, though otherwise this feels like a logical next step from the last album. It also feels like a 10 minute + epic inspired by the final minute of Kate Bush’s “Leave It Open”.

She posted on social media yesterday some personal background to the song:

thanks so very much to everyone kindly sharing 10.5 minutes with me & ‘Bracer’ this past week.

wanted to share a bit on how/why I made this track below in the off chance someone listening may have struggled with the same issues pic.twitter.com/OM6mXBlQ7T

— Katie Gately (@kgsounds) November 13, 2019

"Waltz" sounds like she's luring me into a pie tin

It's very good. It isn't as good as Color imo, but subtler, toned-down refinements are in vogue so I won't be surprised if that emerges as the narrative

WHAT THE FUCK THIS IS AMAZING

New KG?? Hadn't heard about this, just looking it up now.

Looking forward to hearing this.

Love this

Very intrigued by the concept, sounds bonkers and awesome:

"It is an album of two halves, that moves from the effervescence of early years to the defiance and turbulence of teenage angst.

The first half channels inspirations from the busy and unsubtle dynamics of kids TV music and stomp and clatter of early Animal Collective albums, as in the brittle joys of "Howl". For the second half she was thinking about the brutalist sonic experiments of the British post-punk she obsessed over as a teenager, from PiL and Gang Of Four to This Heat, as in the industrial throb of 'Chaw' or the raw low end grafted onto sparse vocal lines in 'Brute', its massive basslines constructed from the manipulated rattling of cardboard shoeboxes.

In typical maverick style, Gately plundered cartoon sound libraries magpie-like to build signature nests of sounds, integrating her own idiosyncratic sound recording strategies and sampling techniques, from shoeboxes to theremin and with a boisterous recurring saxophone."

I think this is the album I have been wanting Gately to make ever since “Pivot” AKA “what if Kate Bush’s “Leave It Open” but an entire genre?”

This really is great. I don't know if I'll ever stop being a 'Pipes is the best' truther but I'm loving this right now.

meat is my jam

Yeah, only had one listen but 'Meat' really stood out to me, too.

It's the most pop she's ever been, but it suits her, she's absolutely leant into giving us a maximalist Pop Experience, flies by too

Almost absurdly dramatic album at times, but it works. "Howl" could be brought to stage.

The ~2:00 min mark of "Fawn" is my favorite moment on the album, serviced by the way she constructs the first two min. The pulsing beat and squeaking synths that kick things off remind me of Clark, but after that, I'm short on references...it sounds sui generis to my ears. The way she layers different vocal patterns, chopping them up digitally along the way, and allows the song to get right up to the edge of discomfort -- the instrumental passage at ~1:30 almost reminds me of something from Kid A -- is intoxicating. Then, she breaks the tension with the album's most captivating melody, adding an alto sax for good measure. The beat remains at the forefront as the song slowly evolves and dissolves away. Amazing stuff.

"Tame" is the other track that really stands out. It's such a physical album. I imagine seeing these songs performed properly live would be an out of body experience.