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review by Bill Binkelman Falling You specialize in crafting vocal ambient music, marrying drifting drones, dark electronica and glitch to the vocal genres of shoegazer, goth, and sung poetry. Anchored by the talents of sound sculptor John Michael Zorko, their latest recording, Touch, is haunting, despairing, soothing, sorrowful, beautiful and ultimately addresses issues of hope amidst the resignation of the pain inherent in the human condition. Heady stuff, from a lyrical standpoint. Zorko's music envelops the poetry of the assorted women singer-songwriters like a loving balm, cushioning the darker aspects and bringing the shadowy corners of the words into sharp relief, while instilling their arrestingly powerful singing with beauty and grace in unique and exciting ways. Zorko composed all the music while the various singers composed the lyrics (referred to as "poetry" in the liner notes). He crafts darkly tinted sometimes rhythmic vistas through the use of samplers, synthesizers, guitars, electronics, loops, and effects. The vocalists featured on Touch are Dru Allen, Sara Ayers, Jennifer McPeak, Victoria Floyd, Erica Mulkey and Aimee Page. Each one of them has a distinct style and a different way of infusing their lyrics with nearly palpable emotion. Allen's delicate waif-like voice opens the album on "something about eve..." Allen has a stunning voice. Zorko's scratch noise effects in the background evoke the feeling of faded photographs and time long since past, while Allen's soaring vocals meld with Zorko's lush synthesizers, reverberating and sucking the listener deep into the heart of her sparse yet powerful lyrics. In stark contrast, Aimee Page's "the art of possession (no escape)," is an intense rhythmic goth-rock number, with deeply echoed piano and skittering noises at the outset, but soon evolving into a steady drum kit (snare, kick bass, high-hat) beat, along with guitar and piano, while Page's voice assumes a more straightforward vocalizing style, drawing comparison to, perhaps, Sarah McLachlan from her first album, (coincidentally, also titled Touch). My favorite song on the album is Dru Allen's second contribution, "less likely to believe." I listened to this one morning on the way to work on the bus and it really got to me. A nicely syncopated punchy glitch rhythm starts things off, soon joined by sparse guitar and scratchy electronic buzzes. When Allen's voice enters this track, her singing is less ethereal than the opening track yet has lost none of its haunting beauty, but instead has become more "human," especially since the lyrics are easier to understand and she sings them clear-voiced (with only some slight echoing and occasional multi-tracking). During the chorus, her voice and Zorko's acoustic guitar, backed by that terrific shuffling glitch beat, create true musical magic. There are six more tracks to the album I could expound on, which would take a long time to do them justice. Suffice it to say that every song has something to recommend it. A few tracks don't have "real" lyrics, but are more like shape-shifting wordless vocal clouds that encircle you, and draw you in through the combination of the respective woman's voice and Zorko's superior way at crafting ambient soundscapes that are darkly beautiful. "moth and flame (sadness of the witch)" (with wordless vocals by Erica Mulkey) is sensual and earthy (Zorko applies some discrete rainstick to great effect), yet also vaguely disturbing. Some tracks contain beats (such as Aimee Page's "march-thirty one" on which they emerge from deep in the mix, slowly but inexorably surrounding Page's voice which seems to hover in the air above them), or the uptempo pulsing rhythms on Victoria Lloyd's "the light between us" which is another one of the several "real song" type compositions, and also features Zorko's most outfront use of synthesizers as instruments, as well as more typical electronica beats). Other pieces are more textural than musical, such as the brilliant ambient vocalist Sara Ayers' "the canoe and the waterfall" where except for sparse piano by Zorko, everything else is more or less atmospheric processing effects. The repeated single lyric is "Come out, come out, wherever you are" and the mixture of the shadowy ambient dronish textures, echoed piano, and Ayers' multi-tracked gorgeous voice is riveting. An album like Touch could take hours and hours of dedicated listening before one starts to appreciate all its wonders, whether the music of Zorko or the lyrics and singing of any of the vocalists. Even if you normally don't delve into vocal music, the women's voices could be listened to as "instruments" in the mix, and that should be enough to captivate you on every song. Myself, I can pay no bigger compliment to this amazing CD than to say I only wish I had much more time to explore every nook and cranny of its edifice. For fans of the assorted genres I mentioned in the opening paragraph (goth and shoegazer, as well as vocal downtempo) and for adventurous dark ambient fans unafraid of these talented women singing from deep within their souls, I give Touch my highest recommendation. Everyone else, well, it's your loss. |
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