ARCHIVE

States (Audio)

Jan 01, 1997
Created by Shelley Hirsch
A complex soundscape that mixes polyphonic renditions of American pop songs ("Blue Moon" and "Blue Skies"), cocktail lounge monologues, techno music, exotica, Bulgarian choral singing, and the Firebird Suite, all strung together in a stew of electronically-treated found sounds. It's not an easy thing melding all this territory into coherence yet Hirsch manages to keep the thing seamlessly afloat for almost 20 minutes. "Tenemos" is a hypnotic treatment of a Steinian sentence, "Don't touch the rosebush." There are grunts and groans, cut up words, drony echoes, clicks and pops. It's a marvelous update on vocal techniques pioneered by Cathy Berberian earlier in the century. When Hirsch keeps things loose, free, and abstract, it works.