Julianna Barwick
“Florine”
Florid

Great… Another mindfuck album! Björk wannabe Julianna Barwick presents us her small collection of random chanting Florine. The cover art already gives a hint of what we can find inside this crazy landscape made of those midi patches called Oohs and Aahs. Prepare yourself for an assault on your senses and your patience. The album opens with Sunlight, Heaven, but I’m sure that if you played the tracks on random, you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The EP in itself works fine as ambient music, although its purpose is confusing. The layers of vocals (and by that I mean there’s only vocals, and just one piano once) create a soothing atmosphere that turns erotic and then creepy after every 4 bars. The use of reverb and layering is masterful, and the few understandable lyrics almost command you to do exactly as told: relax, choose, stay, etc. In between the layers and layers of church kids being spanked, we find the song Anjos, which is a beautiful piano piece (probably midi, because of the lack of dynamics). This fast waltz is reminiscent of the Amelie OST by Yann Tiersen, and is probably the only song on the album that stands out, although it becomes quite repetitive towards the end. The album is closed by yet another piece made out of layers of singing. The production is very good, specially noticeable when paying attention to the large amount of layers in it, although the use of auto-tune and midi events to change the tones are very noticeable some times. Overall, it’s a good effort and a decent ambient EP and a good live show, although repetitive at times and would probably not work as a full length.

Popularity: 1%