(2023) Bianca Scout - The Heart of the Anchoress
Review:
On The Heart of the Anchoress, Bianca Scout illustrates the unsettled and slightly terrifying aspects of a life of sacrifice, using swaths of gossamer sound to paint eerie scenes that feel fantastical. Her music is haunted, made of looping, shimmering organs and whispering voices that evoke yearning and nostalgia. At the core of the album is the anchoress — an imagined character of a medieval-era woman who chose a life of devotion and prayer. Much of Scout’s work explores disappearance and discovery, and the anchoress feels like a perfect companion for those ideas. “She’s a vessel that is quite tough, supportive, and transformative,” Scout says. This ghostly album is just one stop of the anchoress’s ongoing journey, though. “It’s the beginning,” Scout says. “It’s like putting the knife in the passing of time and opening something up and being like, OK, it will never be the same again.” — bandcamp
***
…On opener ‘Empty Space’, detuned plucks, organ wails and pedal bumps pierce the room’s palpable shape, giving way to rotating foley rhythms that sound like an inverse 4/4. Is there a kick drum? Or is it a cable being pulled from an amplifier? Loose beats collide with each other like derailed trains, and Scout’s choral vocals swirl into intense sheet noise. ‘Vanguard’ extends these ideas further, looping wooden clatters as a foundation for wavering organ drones and Scout’s unforgettable vocal turn, that puts her somewhere between Empress’s Nicola Hodgkinson and Eartheater, flitting from dry British nonchalance to hyperdream poptimism seamlessly. But it’s her more low-key moments that stand out for us: ‘Chorus’ and ‘Lamina’ shuttle Scout’s vocals into the background, submerging them in reverb and echo. The latter dispenses with them almost entirely, foregrounding nauseous organ oozes that build into a fervent crescendo. Elsewhere, Scout embodies the folk whispers that run throughout the album on ‘Phantom Limb’, wailing an uncannily beautiful song that materializes like mists on a bronze age burial mound. And while so many contemporary artists are more than happy to look into the past simply for decoration, Scout sounds as if she’s channeling spirits that control her, contort her, and traumatize her. ‘The Heart of the Anchoress’ is melancholy and euphoric, angry and ecstatic – its an album that fits the mood of the here and now, as we wonder whether to lose ourselves in digital confusion or escape into a past that’s deep, dark, and druidic. — boomkat.com
Track List:
01 - Empty space
02 - Vanguard
03 - Dealers Portals
04 - Chorus
05 - This City Had a Wall
06 - lamina
07 - Phantom Lamb
08 - Dedicated two
09 - Proud to Employ a Qualified Ghost
10 - Kingdom
Media Report:
Genre: ambient, dream-pop, experimental
Country: London, UK
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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