Hons is at times a really good album, laden with glitchy electronics and and swirling ambience it makes the listening experience strangely danceable, yet at the same time not at all. But at others it gets a little bit to much into twinkley happiness that seems to offset the glitch weirdness. Like it sort of gets bogged down by the glitch, rather than enhanced by it. But there is lots of twinkly glitching, if that is the sort of thing you look for.
Undulat featuring Alison Shaw of the Cranes is probably the most stand out and interesting song on the album, with her sort of soft nasal voice really completing the fractured musical landscape, sort of holding everything together, while the chaos surrounds and threatens to overwhelm her. However her voice is strong enough to wrestle through it and come out triumphant. Which is rather quite neat, since it is pretty different from where I would expect her voice to be resting. Well because first I find it is actually a pretty happy song, and second the broken fracture of the music.
Maybe IÕm wrong but I tend to associate with the Cranes with a more sombre fluid listening experience and this is just wildly erratic. The sort of off kilter melodies and what almost sounds like detuning pianos or something in the background pretty weird. And then to have her sort of sultry despairing voice, interesting. And that is nice.
I mean really this whole release is a pretty happy . It just seems so gosh darn optimistic and that can’t be a bad thing. I mean hell sometimes you just really want to hear those nice albums. I mean not everything can be, and sometimes things are just way to optimistic, but this is rather quite nice, like it just makes me feel so warm and squishy, and you know I didn’t think glitch music was capable of that but I suppose I thought wrong.
I think it has something to do with the weird like detuning pianoish sound that I mentioned. Okay if that doesn’t make sense it sounds like someone is playing piano and tuning and detuning it at the same time, and it is a mighty bizarre sound. Like it adds just this element of instability to the song. But not instability in a bad way, much the opposite as a structure, but without the structure. Like it structures the.. the twinkly glitch, but at the same time it is kind of an insane structure, so it doesn’t ruin the experimental nature of the songs.
And I mentioned the track with Alison Shaw, but I should also point out that there a few tracks here with similar style female vocalists. And they are mighty damned interesting. Like it is a real weird addition to the music. This just very down tempo gloomy type female singing on tiptop of this very chaotic upbeat happy music. Kinda cool really.
