On her beguiling debut release, the UK musician joins the atmosphere of ambient Music with the structure of choral composition and the seeming effortlessness of pop.
Reverb can be like a drug. It’s easy to overdo it, easy to become dependent upon it. Everything becomes beautiful inside its velvet cocoon; everything feels profound. A few years ago, there was a brief trend for remixes that electronically “stretched” songs into gaseous abstractions many times longer than the original versions, freezing them in a seemingly endless shimmer. The output invariably Sounded substantial, no matter how lightweight the source material: A reworking of Justin Bieber’s “U Smile” turned the 16-year-old pop star into a “celestial choirboy.” But what sounded like magic was really just simple number-crunching. The technique involved digitally pulverizing an audio file and sustaining each grain of sound in cathedral-grade reverb, like so many dust motes floating in mid-air. The ease with which this simulacrum of grandeur could be attained demonstrates how easily artifice can become a gimmick, a cheap high.
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