Quiet | Features | Album of the week | Author feature: Im Hole by Aya is our album of the week

2021-10-22 04:41:42 By : Ms. Alice Zhang

In her profound personal debut, aya opened the door to her inner sanctuary like a singer-songwriter, and at the same time promoted the development of avant-garde dance music.

In the first album released by aya for Hyperdub, the human voice represents a flexible musical tool. Through her poems, she conveyed concrete images and juicy metaphors ("burned by my desire to roll a stone in front"), and through the use of exciting voice modulation, she inspired various influences, both alienation And sublime. I experienced her extended cyborg voice, like the trembling psychedelic sound described by Kit Mackintosh in his recent book "Neon Scream". It has a post-humanist dimension, as if produced by a robotic throat with a prosthetic vocal cord (the track title "OoB Prosthesis"-short for "out of body"-points in this direction). But it is also about speech, distortion, rhyme, word play, and alliteration ("a sharp scratch, we start from the scalp"). Her language is full of unexpected turns.

Listening to vocal repertoires, such as the gloomy earworm "What if I fall asleep and slipped" or the self-described ASMR exercises of "Emley light us moor", my attention kept shifting. There are steam trails left by sound, constantly changing in pitch, depth and texture, just like those DeepDream videos, and multi-dimensional works floating in the background-high-definition sound tapestry interweaves with sound fragments and nuances of timbre Together, and the dramatic composition of fireworks that feels untimely. British producer Aya Sinclair (formerly LOFT) is a true sound contortionist, always looking for new ways to compress sound into unknown forms. As a pioneer in cross-border London, she is known for her metamorphic art and technical dexterity. She is known for her fusion of aesthetics, crisp sound design and brain-melting arrangements, and her northern humor and playful tone. For backing. The structure of her work is difficult to grasp because she somehow manages to transform the exciting atmosphere of J Dilla beats into the dance music of FWD thinking. In the jerky'dis yacky', the slow multi-tempo and 8-bit beeps give the impression that her rhythm is about to collapse, but you somehow managed to get locked in.

I can't help but compare im Hole with Laurie Anderson's groundbreaking debut, Big Science. Of course, not in terms of style, but because of its unique aura, deconstruction of human voice, language and music, complexity and contemporary use of variable digital effects. "Hello everyone, and welcome to the show," Aya greeted us in the overture, with its creepy chants and anxious feedback on the electro-acoustic cello reminiscent of Krzysztof Penderecki. A similar movie atmosphere defines the song "I'm still tasting the air." This episode describes an intimate experience with "him," she declared, "One night is enough to know where the roots are."

im Hole is both a lyric poem about high-level sound synthesis and self-revelation. It reveals her transgender experience and a reflection on the entire concept of queer art. My experience of this album is very emotional, even voyeuristic, like a sound diary, the most private entry reflects aya’s personal struggle ("It’s been four years now/ I’ve been in the trading venue/ evading faces/ Save grace / Elegiac surrations bubble upward / But if we hurry, we set the pace") presented in an exciting futuristic sound environment. 

For the Web 3.0 generation, this may be a kind of brainstorming, but the direct response is physical, prompting people to produce the urge to twist and move quickly. One of the core of the record, "The only solution I found is to jump higher", just like a declaration. Riding on arpeggios, trance stings, super-synthetic, Kalimba-like synthesizers, static explosions and weird human-shaped words, it is one of the best in those peak meditation times. Disoriented and engrossed, there are not many existing coordinates in dance music that can help us move around in the artificial soundscape of aya. Those who started to like her deconstructive explosion and cheeky editor released as LOFT may find her new direction a bit too serious, or even high-profile, but under the apparently more academic approach to music production, she retains her transcendent irony feel.

In the early 1990s, a quarter of a century after Roland Barthes famously announced the "death of the author," we witnessed the separation between dance music producers and their music. Anonymity overwhelms the charm driven by the charm of the disco and the house. The development of the information superhighway and the influence of the new network aesthetics have promoted this trend. The producer becomes part of the collective—independent technology, hardcore, and a single mechanical joint of the jungle machine. Artists will hide behind various nicknames, exchange different masks as they please, and the concept of pop star as a complete artist. He may dabble in poetry, film or painting as a single project unified behind a proper name. A part of à la Nick Cave, Madonna or Beyonce, sounds almost blasphemous.

This pattern will reproduce well in the dubstep scenes of the 00s, but in the past few years new sounds have appeared, especially in the field of deconstructing club music (although aya himself is not a fan of the word), where many Non-binary, trans and POC producers have found a platform for personal and political self-expression through their lyrics. Getting out of anonymity, picking up the microphone, and regaining all the charm and glittering decisions of dance music innovators—just like the SOPHIE example—has had a huge positive impact on the entire dance music ecosystem. It's been too long. The lad's paradise.   

An important aspect of these new club aesthetics is the integration of hardcore continuum, footwork, traps, global club voices, and saccharine pop. At the same time, they have angered the technical guys because of their mischievous tendencies. It has always been a refocusing of voices. And there are not so many recent records that can match my hole. Those who have watched Aya's performance in the club will know that as an equal role of DJ and MC, her voice has always been essential to her performance. Like a jungle radio pirate, she uses it as a glue between performers, audiences and music.

But it would be wrong to put aya in the pantheon of humiliating quasi-anonymous nightclubs like Goldie or Aphex Twin. In the 1960s, she would be a singer-songwriter, and enthusiasts in turtleneck sweaters would be distressed by the lyrics she hid in the cafe on the Left Bank. In the 1980s, she will become a media artist, producing avant-garde pop music and surrealist self-directed video operas. Today, the ability of cheap DAW technology to create a complex electronic environment has made it possible for a new generation of singers and producers, who combine club aesthetics, avant-garde composition methods, popular trends, and the wishes of songwriters to become the closest people. Carrier. lyrics. Evocative and expressive, it is hard to imagine an artist who existed before the 21st century like aya. But to quote Laurie Anderson himself, "This is time. This is the record of time."

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