Frederikke Hoffmeier, the Danish industrial electronics purveyor behind Puce Mary, recently released a new LP Persona on the Copenhagen noise label Posh Isolation. While her live set is powerfully loud, Hoffmeier’s album explores territory that’s just as intimately psychological as it is physical. The opaque warble of her voice on COURSES evokes the tenor of a pre-verbal thought, before it has been refined, dulled and made communicable by the conscious mind; when it’s nothing but crude psychic agitation. The frequencies of this vocal split into two layers with dissonant meanings. The grating lower register threatens while the upper shelf sounds panicked and frightened. The synth throbs lurking in the background are true industrial sounds, not just in reference to an artist or movement that has been dubbed as such. They suggest a purring pulsing radio transmitter through a cell phone or any number of phenomena adding to the current of white noise that surrounds us whether we notice it or not. These synths are not abrasive but they are threatening, not just in timbre but in association. Grip it here.
“DSM” showcases the many individual styles of Brockton’s Van Buren Records
It has been a fruitful 18 months for the Brockton super-collective Van Buren Records. Their two 2021 records, Bad For Press and Black Wall…