TIP OF THE TONGUE 27 JULY 2008


Scorces
I Turn Into You
Not Not Fun NNF-125
2xLP
OUT OF STOCK!

Much-anticipated new studio album from the duo of Christina Carter and Heather Leigh Murray, recorded in one night by Tom Carter. Edition of 500 copies with embossed art sleeves designed by Marcia Bassett (Zaimph/GHQ/Hototogisu). No one sounds like Scorces. Murray and Carter inhabit a zone of almost subliminal musical exchange, generating complex matrices of barely-there single notes that combined the weight of planets with the motion of feathers. I Turn Into You consists of a series of longingly extended and deeply sensual song forms, with the duo musically morphing into the other's persona via the exchange of instruments and roles (Carter on pedal steel, Murray on guitar, trading lead vocals...). The music is pointillist in the extreme, consisting of webs of solitary sounds and slow, sweeping gestures that represent some of the most microscopically aware and technically bold improvised moves to ever orbit the whole drone/folk/avant underground. The duo can actually play their instruments and as such are able to explore areas of emotional nuance and tonal colour that are out of reach of most of the loop-pedal and F/X school of noise-improv dopes. Comparisons to music this personal and distended are ultimately fruitless but there are echoes of Giacinto Scelsi, Loren Mazzacane Connors and Keiji Haino, the feel of early choral music, the sanctified bell tones of Washington Phillips, the abstract sonic constructs of Mnemonists and Biota… the whole deal pivots on the central track, "Romance Is Not A Thing Of The Past", sung by Murray in an aching, zoned style that evokes your favourite female margin walkers - Patty Waters, Meredith Monk, Suzanne Langille, Yma Sumac - without ever sounding like any of them. A music of whispers in deep space, of intensely sensual interaction, of duo playing at an all-time intimate and technical high, where every note implies nothing more than itself, where action is never borne from reaction but instead seems so intricately plotted as to be ineluctable. One of the most beautiful and mysterious recordings to come out of the US underground in an age from two powerful artists who have re-drawn the boundaries of expressive, feminine heaviness. More devastatingly out and genuinely challenging than any 'noise' record, this gets the highest possible recommendation. Staggering.



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