On Hedera a beat, generated by a defective tape deck, mangy as it is, is the golden loom on which she warps her voice with exquisite control and detail, replicating it and interweaving it with its own weft.
Only squinting very closely in good light reveals that the almost black-on-black cover art of Lesley Flanigan‘s new album depicts a bed of ivy in the gloom—hedera, to use its proper name.
Tampa-born, Sarasota and NY-educated New York City resident Flanigan is a graceful wrestler with the physicality of sound, some of whose previous work (crafted from found speakers, wood, and amplifying circuits) can be heard on collections like Amplifications and Glacier. On Hedera a beat, generated by a defective tape deck, mangy as it is, is the golden loom on which she warps her voice with exquisite control and detail, replicating it and interweaving it with its own weft.
The twenty-minute title piece is ritualistic, if we grant the term amiable elasticity. Like all rhythmic, repetitive singing—say Tuvan or Inuit throat-singing—wordlessness is a force of both nature and artifice. With no discernible crimping or distortion, but constant layering, she starts low to the earth, ground-creeping like her ivy. A sweet voice drifts upward, becomes several, which become more insistent, bellowing like a trumpet, merging into a choir. The listening ear gets fooled, the impacted body reacts reflexively.
A brief coda entitled “Can Barely Feel My Feet,” cobbled out of Flanigan’s home made speaker system, is a feedback flecked but benign bring down after the powerful experience of “Hedera.”
Hedera is available on Physical Editons.
