Space as musical as all the sound – Elizabeth Bishop

There has been an interesting dialogue going on between a certain bleeding edge of the hypnagogic underground and New Age music. The term comes with some seriously heavy baggage, but The Skaters (James Ferraro on his solo records perhaps even more so), Dolphins Into The Future, and Daniel Lopatin have all flirted with some New Age tropes, and incorporated elements of the washed synth tones and that strange hovering politeness into their overall sound. All of which makes perfect sense given the ages of the people involved and the aesthetic of hypnagogia, particularly the way it reflects a kind of (contrived or otherwise) musical unconscious – an unconscious bubbling with the latter stages of the kosmische sound and those odd anodyne and DJ-less FM stations that broadcasted throughout the ’80s. But whether this means there’s been anything approaching a re-appraisal of New Age music, and whether New Age has new currency and isn’t instantly a pejorative term is another matter.

I mention all that because it’s curious to notice how often the term New Age has been used in describing Julianna Barwick’s music and in particular her new album, The Magic Place. It’s almost like a get out clause, or an informal caveat. The description generally appears towards the end of a piece and is delivered in the electronic equivalent of a hushed tone, as if the writer is unsure of its current value. New Age music might be said to have had two elements – the sonic and the spiritual – and the uneasiness in the reception of it is that both of these elements seemed ersatz or watered down. It was fake, musical wallpaper. For the hypnagogic artists this isn’t a deal breaker as they’re concerned with the possibilities inherent in the soundworld of New Age. The ambiguity surrounding the supposed spiritual element is something else again, however, and it’s into this area of ambiguity that most of these caveats seem to be pitched, as if the thought is ‘well, this feels spiritual and is having a certain affect on me, but is it real enough? Am I going to get found out?’ It’s a strange thing to behold, because when you’re caught inside the whirl of voices and the sky-scraping melodies, questions of authenticity and honesty seem almost absurd.

Julianna Barwick’s work is grounded in her childhood involvement in choirs and church groups; and the textures and loops she creates are based around the experience of listening to and joining in with massed voices. The whole, despite being created from a single voice, is polyphonic and broad – it has the weight of ages. The places in which she sang and listened are relevant here too, as production wise there is a good deal of space and light – at times the production space is so cavernous that the voice-loops seem far off and disembodied, evocations of remembered tones as much as representations of real ones. This removal lends her sound a wistfulness and a kind of coolness – you almost expect to be able to see your breath whilst you’re listening. The Magic Place differs from her last two records in that it features a good deal more instrumentation. Piano, synths and drums all feature, even if these are also subject to the thinning out process she applies to her voice loops. ‘Prizewinning’ even has a juddering bass line. It does make for a fuller (if that isn’t a contradiction), more ambitious overall sound. But it is the voice that dominates. And such a voice. She has spoken in the past of how she was fascinated by choirs featuring young boys, especially those lone boy treble passages rising piercing and high above the throng. Barwick has a huge range in her voice, layering loops throughout the mid and high-ranges that act like a covering of high cloud in places, but it’s those passages where she reaches a certain high clear tone that really catches the breath. The last track in particular, ‘Flown’, is an extended exploration of the interaction of this piercing tone with softer mid-range ones. It’s almost unbearably beautiful in places, and makes any notion that this might in any way be a contrivance seem odd.

I think the New Age problem is, in the end (and despite having crapped on about it for a few hundred words) a misnomer, one maybe born of laziness or even a kind of ticklish embarrassment at hearing such nakedness. Or maybe we just have short memories and the New Age infection (because it is in an infection) arrived later and has been mapped backwards to consume anything that features the human voice in this way and that vaguely feels like it might be aiming for some kind of transcendence. It may be that music like this will always be open to these kind of questions, which is fine as long we’re prepared to listen and make up our own minds.

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