Step Right Up: Paper Dollhouse
Courtesy of Fractured Air
Interview with Astrud Steehouder & Nina Bosnic, Paper Dollhouse.
“I feel like the experience and the record took us on a journey, like it had an intention with us rather than the other way round.”
—Nina Bosnic
Words: Mark Carry
I recall first discovering Paper Dollhouse sometime in 2012. The mesmerizing debut album ‘A Box Painted Black’– released on Bird Records, an offshoot from UK’s Finders Keepers Records in 2011 – carved a unique world of cinematic homespun folk creations that contained haunting vocals, acoustic guitar, found sounds, electronic manipulations and slide projector as seamless textures embedded the dark minimal gothic folk framework. Paper Dollhouse began as the alias for London-based artist Astrud Steehouder that would later evolve into a collaborative project with visual artist Nina Bosnic. The resultant sound is masterfully captured on the group’s utterly transcendent sophomore full-length release ‘Aeonflower’, which retains the dense…
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Maria Papadomanolaki, Dawn Scarfe and Grant Smith on Soundcamp
FEMINATRONIC DISCOVERS TODAY – SHIRLEY CASON
Susanna Eastburn on Breadth Charge
Too true…How many composers / artists never have a chance to be heard or played?
Beatriz Ferreyra ~ GRM Works
Courtesy to A Closer Listen
GRM Works, by France-based Argentinian composer Beatriz Ferreyra, is perhaps a key new entry in the wonderful Recollection GRM series by Editions Mego, which represents an important documentary move towards producing a new set of archival materials of one of the birthplaces of electronic music, the Groupe de Recherches Musicales as founded in 1958 by Pierre Schaeffer. The history traced by the collection is one of differing voices for the context under which we usually place the GRM in the development of electroacoustics, in the sense that it becomes a beacon for a modernism that is not fully dedicated to the machine. Its serialist, more formally avant-garde counterpart, best exemplified by composers like Milton Babbitt, Karlheinz Stockhausen and later Pierre Boulez, set out for the conquest of sound in a scientific approach intimately compatible with that geared towards the dominance of nature, a mechanical environment to be transcended…
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Matana Roberts ~ Coin Coin Chapter Three: river run thee
Courtesy of A Closer Listen.
Coin Coin Chapter Three is one of the best albums of 2015. How do we know this already? Because in the modern era, there has never been a year in which ten albums were better than this one. Matana Roberts is a true original, and this album is a true original; there’s nothing else like it on the market. It’s not even like the last two installments of the 12-chapter series. This may confound recommendation engines, which may pick up hints of Gil Scott-Heron or The Last Poets, but otherwise be thwarted.
The deep, bluesy jazz of Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres (2011) is nearly absent here, sublimated into hints and mirages. But gone also are that album’s plaintive, out of control screams (“Pov Piti” – ouch!), reduced to a single, soft, off-key “come away with me” late in the album. The big band that made…
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Richard Whitelaw interviews Vicki Bennett ahead of the Notations tour
Although this is an old post, still an interesting read.
Anna Caragnano & Donato Dozzy ~ Sintetizzatrice
Courtesy of A Closer Listen.
Ambient in nature, yet stemming from an electronic background, Sintetizzatrice is a departure for Donato Dozzy and a wonderful debut for Anna Caragnano. The album’s title is the Italian feminine for “synthesizer”, but in this case it’s more of a synthesis. Donato Dozzy layers and loops Cagagnano’s voice into lovely shapes and sizes. These from time to time resemble the work of a synthesizer, but also flute, violin, even drums. Add the fact that the vocalist engages in whistles and onomatopoeia, and the results are remarkable.
Lisa Gerard comes to mind; Caragnano has that multi-octave range, most apparent on “Parallelo” but present throughout. Katie Gately and Holly Herndon are other recent contemporaries. With the recent resurgence of interest in a cappella renditions (for example, “Pitch Perfect” and “The Sing-Off”), it’s amazing to hear all of the parts performed by a single voice. But of course it’s not a single…
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