Birthday of Bless You (4.08, Not Not Fun)
For: William Basinski, Valet, Grouper
It is difficult to write about an album that centers it's creative focus on the act of creation. Ore describes describes this album as "my meditation on feminine sacred invention, on sun worship in the moments before earth disintegration, on the proud miracle of creation in a trash-proliferation era." Figure out that means and you will figure out this album. Needless to say I still a little perplexed by it. This is not to say that I do not find Birthday of Bless You beautiful and at times transcendental. I just don't really know why. The sense of intimacy of this album is the most beguiling aspect, it retains the bedroom tape manipulation of Basinski's Disintegration Tapes yet steps out of the bedroom and into the expanse of nature. The vocals are buried under trance inducing washes of electronically manipulated drones of noise and toy keyboard sci fi sounds, yet the process seems to exist outside of the bedroom, like Ore is recording in a wooded glenn or a hilltop rather than a dingy basement or a pedal strewn apartment. A radical departure from the meditative pace of Birthday is the track "Infant Ra" where screech violins compete with nails on a chalk board as Inca shouts about discovery in oyster shells and pearls. In it's overarching theme, Ore attempts to recreate the impulse that leads to discovery through the spontaneous act of creation, or something like that. Did I mention she covers a Merle Haggard song? All of this is very mysterious.
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