Atmospherics
Matches is Chicago solo artist Whitney Johnson, and her 2015
album Somnaphoria is an electronic, symphonic
sound that uses voice and viola in augmented/altered ways to help create the
brooding, pulsing, looping currents across more recognisable, if occasional,
musical characters like plucked strings or woodwind, though these too are presumably
produced electronically.
Whilst there are 11 tracks, split across two lp sides Awake and Dream, these states of being are not that explicitly reflected in the
musical tones/moods/pace of each, and all does tend to merge for the impact of
the whole rather than shifts between each – though there are differing sections
like the dual orchestra//viola distortion of sixth track Sinister Prophecies Of Coming Catastrophe The Cold, which ‘ends’ Awake (Side A), eerily, and then seventh track Burst Asunder, which naturally 'begins' Dream (Side B) which is a
foregrounding of vocal sounds over a harmonium-esque repetitive base. But this
then segues into eighth, Stripped Of Its
Halo, and thus the merging continues.
It is essentially atmospheric, and hypnotically so.
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