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On Washed Ashore (40'46") Panic Girl (the Electronic Musician Martha Bahr) invites us into a spacey, colorful dream world. Her showcase mindspace is carefully alien, as it devises secret, unseen realms for the bright, receptive listener. Across four harmonious abstractions Bahr transmits the tingle of gradual upward motion. While imaginative expressions intertwine, bracing fields of synthesized sound slip between rhythm and atmosphere. As voltage controlled considerations interlock in the logic of notes in repeated series, the layered patterns congeal into a kind of undulating texture. The advancing star showers modulate in blissed-out ambience, with each track seeming to wonder and wander its own energy field. Embracing density and a kind of perpetual musical motion, Washed Ashore provides many meditative moments. These gently moving forms arise from Bahr's pleasant performance passages. Her dedicated calm labor live sings the song of the synth. Both dreamer and builder, she conceives an expression, then sparks it into being - showing us that, if electricity is considered the source of all EM, then it is as much the kind from the wall socket as from the currents of the mind.
- Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END 13 January 2022 |
