Happy New Year and welcome to 2019! I hope everyone had a swell conclusion to 2018,
with moments of energy, love and light!
For me, I still have a stack of submissions from last year on my docket,
so I’ll merrily continue to ingest and investigate them as the new year unfolds…
Light From Another
Light is the sophomore full-length effort from Voicehandler, a Bay Area duo
comprising vocalist/synthesist Danishta Rivero – half of noisy reggaetón duo
Las Sucias – and drummer/percussionist Jacob Felix Heule, who many may
recognize from his album with Bill Orcutt called Colonial Donuts. Together
the pair conjure up heavy duty clouds of free-form, catatonia-inducing madness
perfect to drive away the winter blues.
The album arrives courtesy of Humbler Records, which I
believe is a Heule-directed effort, as all of the label’s releases feature him
in some way, shape or form. It features
a trio of extended live recordings from a prolific Spring period likely in the year
the disc was released. The first piece, “June
8”, immediately tears open the space-time continuum with frenetic drumming,
gurgling modular synth vapors, and a glossolalia that is at time raw and
guttural and at others processed into oblivion.
The spastic ripples emanate a sense of exalted abandon – beatific and
bombastic all at once, arresting and entrancing simultaneously. At the mid-point, Heule’s drumming takes
center stage as Rivero’s vocals become shrouded in processing, and then a
barely there crackle remains as the piece comes to a close.
“June 1” is a synth-forward exercise, more drone-based than
its predecessor. There is a percussive
element present but it’s nearly obfuscated by the buzzy layers of synth. The drones themselves seem to beat against
each other as well, adding another layer of complexity to the proceedings. Rivero’s voice slips in as a sampled element
that is granularized and stretched out to the edges of a non-existent horizon.
“May 25” steps back into the territory mined by “June 8”,
but in a more fully-realized form. The piece
is certainly noisy but there are shreds of delightful sanity revealing
themselves throughout. A buzzing drone
appears amidst a series of drum rolls that may be meant to introduce an entity
that never arrives. The rolls peter out to
reveal a cascade of synth/cymbal washes that vanish into the most introspective
passages on display so far. These final
lowercase moments had me stretching my ears in an attempt to catch the subtlest
of sonic events.
This gentle-not-gentle silver slab of sound is still
available at the source, so direct yourself to the Humbler Bandcamp and prepare
to be transported to unknown zones.
