Jarboe‘s Illusory LP is just lovely, those warm jettisons of voice on the title track caught in the flow of a simple undulating accompaniment, its glittering glide delicately delineated in vaporising distance, the soft shimmering edges finally tapering out on a faint organ drone.
In contrast, the rest of the album is more abstracted, scattered. “Arrival” has her tongue dancing on mirrored loops and backward glances, threadbare strands gathering into a flickering unison. The choralling distance and plain song of “Cathedral” curls in on itself, fed into a dusty drone and whispering echoics. These pieces seem less concerned with the completeness of the opening track, weaving sketchily through, the voice more textural, song-like breaths lullabying the focus to light orchestral caresses or sorrowful sustain, at one point sending you shivers as the close microphonics seem to place Jarboe right in the room with you.
The instrumental “Nourish” introduces an Eastern flavour to the proceedings, shifting the air around you in Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud-like tensives, mascara(‘d) in animal skinned percussives, begging for some fevered vocalisation that sadly never arrives. A wavering macabra that reminds me of Jarboe’s live candle-lit atmospheres that I was so lucky to experience a few years back, here ending abruptly in knifed hessian.
Illusory is a pleasure that terminates far too quickly, and has you begging for more.
-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
