Phew – Vertigo KO

Disciples

I’d like to imagine there’s some Freudian primary school where aspersions are cast heartily on people’s unconsciousness, though one wonders the effects of Oedipalising on ‘your mum’ jokes. Phew describes this album as “an unconscious sound sketch” and, for all the half-finished-ness that might imply, she’s got a thoroughly glittering musical psyche and intuition. The word “drone” could be used, but if that’s accurate it’s less in the sense of glut-drenching and more a kind of hypnogogic paralysis. It’s not a “nice” album in that sense, but it’s definitely got nice bits.

Opener “The Very Ears Of Morning” sets out the stall — somewhere in the ambit of Tim Hecker‘s Ravedeath, but less about drifting off of pills and more about ketaminic sharp edges, shifting. Or one of those sunrises that’s more malevolent than emancipatory. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect of this record, but somehow I missed the bit where Phew’s well good at marshalling synths, samplers, loops and ephemera into a sound that’s compelling like a fishook to the lip. Such that I didn’t notice the relative downplaying of her voice (or at least not expressly top billing).

If you’re not au fait with Phew, she’s in that category of “been around a long time” but also very much “always worth a listen”. A gorgeous voice but never inclined to just be a gorgeous voice. What melody is here is fragmentary, passing; what is vocal here is hesitant, fractured — “All That Vertigo” sounds something like an arte povere version of ’80s tape noise industrial. Or perhaps ’80s industrial with a better subconscious reasoning about shape. It feels amorphous but isn’t lacking in drama, movement.

Also somewhere on the amorphous scale (it’s a scale that’s necessarily difficult to define) is a Raincoats cover “The Void”, taking a relatively barren original and sitting it bang on the precipice of arrhythmia and cardiac arrest. I’m not much of a Raincoats afficionado, but I’ve never heard them sound like a panic attack. There’s a defiant pulse in there, anchoring the drift, but that’s doing none of the work of making it any less queasy.

I’m not sure if I’d describe Vertigo KO as an evocative record, because it’s covered in murk and half-caught snatches of sunlight. It’s not quite miserablist or quietist; it’s definitely affirming something, but quite what isn’t really clear. When I compare it to ’80s industrial, I don’t mean it’s half-baked, but that it occupies a space of experimenting with form, noises, disparate elements, parity and confusion — but it’s ever so consummate. Something you’d expect from someone who’s been at it this long; but still a welcome surprise to have a record so warped.

-Kev Nickells-