Are ‘Friends’ Electric? review – Elaine Mitchener redefines what singing means in virtuoso tour-de-force
Wigmore Hall, London The vocalist travels the full spectrum of the human voice, from subdued sounds of mouth and breath to an exhilarating remix of her own hyper-exuberant electronic soundscape First, ambient electronics: quiet twitters and whistles approaching birdsong, as if synthesisers had been recorded in the wild. Then crooning, close to the mic but with all trace of melody excised to leave only the sounds of mouth and breath. Then finally something closer to singing – still intensely inward – that travelled the full spectrum from guttural groans and glitching vocal fry to exquisite bel canto resonance as the electronics bubbled, rippled and thudded. As openers go, Yvette Janine Jackson’s Waiting was slow-burn, even gnomic. Other items in this remarkable programme of works for voice and electronics had more immediate impact – the no-holds-barred intensity of the word “white”, crescendoing to rawness and then looped, that began Laure M Hiendl’s White RadianceTM. Or the faux-baroque sampled strings that launched Loré Lixenberg’s powerfully bonkers political manifesto-cum-arioso Cosmic Voice Party. From subdued start to exhilarating finish, however, the entire programme laid bare and revelled in the constituent parts of the human vocal apparatus. Continue reading...
Wigmore Hall, London
The vocalist travels the full spectrum of the human voice, from subdued sounds of mouth and breath to an exhilarating remix of her own hyper-exuberant electronic soundscape
First, ambient electronics: quiet twitters and whistles approaching birdsong, as if synthesisers had been recorded in the wild. Then crooning, close to the mic but with all trace of melody excised to leave only the sounds of mouth and breath. Then finally something closer to singing – still intensely inward – that travelled the full spectrum from guttural groans and glitching vocal fry to exquisite bel canto resonance as the electronics bubbled, rippled and thudded.
As openers go, ’s Waiting was slow-burn, even gnomic. Other items in this remarkable programme of works for voice and electronics had more immediate impact – the no-holds-barred intensity of the word “white”, crescendoing to rawness and then looped, that began ’s White Radiance. Or the faux-baroque sampled strings that launched ’s powerfully bonkers political manifesto-cum-arioso Cosmic Voice Party. From subdued start to exhilarating finish, however, the entire programme laid bare and revelled in the constituent parts of the human vocal apparatus.