I remember the specific moment I added this album to my queue — this Exclaim! post from February included the video for Felt:
I watched it twice at least, fully slack-jawed. I remember thinking something like ‘if the whole album is like that, it’ll be unforgettable.’
Reader: it is, and it is. The album was released today and I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s the most interesting album I’ve heard since that Melt Motif soundtrack.
It’s off-kilter from the first seconds. Felt opens with a drone-y, out-of-tune guitar and electronic percussion, and her voice comes in at a whisper. As the song goes on, her voice gains strength, more elements are added to the mix that make it even more unsettling.
Just listen to this:
How do you describe that? It’s incredible. It’s not likely to be the song of the summer. I love it. And it gets weirder.
Kee Avil is the stage name for Vicky Mettler. From her Bandcamp:
Montréal producer Kee Avil combines guitar, voice, and electronic production to forge deconstructed songs informed by a distinctive amalgam of post-industrial, avant-pop, glitch, minimalist, and experimental folk sensibilities.
Yes, sure, that is a way to describe it. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before. I’ve gone looking for other articles about this album, and they
The production feels sparse, but the few elements there are doing a lot. The primary instrument is her voice, sometimes gentle and breathy, but quickly shifting and distorting and layering unpredictably. There are instruments: guitar, double bass, violin, and more. They’re barely recognizable, though, buried in distortion or creepy electronic drones, glitches, or other sounds.
Check out Gelatin:
It’s skin-crawling stuff. Few things here resemble properly structured songs, much less hooks. When something like a chorus emerges, it tends to degenerate with repetition. What lyrics are decipherable feel like they’re out of a Clive Barker film.
This one sounds like Sneaker Pimps getting beat up by Trent Reznor, and ends like the last seconds of a horror movie:
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