Gayle Brogan, founder of Boa Melody Bar exercises her free-folk persona Pefkin on Australian label Sound and Fury. Lets first examine the title, Zugunruhe, which describes anxious behavior in migratory animals and to be quite frank if this album was designed to elicit this state in the listener it is quite accomplished. It had me wishing to move from its general vicinity marking its success at being a form of aural discomfort. Do not mistake this quip for a question in regards to the compositional or performance skills of Gayle Brogan, it is not. Close listening takes you through the prickly soundscape constructed as haunting, as in ‘Shells’, to view it’s form of processed guitars and vocal manipulations of harmony. ‘Third Part’ sees movement in form from the acoustic, including analogue electronics before opening up the analogue squelch assault of ‘Ancient Wings from the Printing Stone’, combining motifs of the idea of free-form construction in a psychedelic melange that almost disappears into a surreal abyss.
The title track is the gold of the album, it really does document the word with precision, encapsulating the mood and psychological state in the listener akin to treatments of anxiety that Hitchcock sought in ‘The Birds’. While this sort of cathartic psycho-acoustic creation is not my cup of tea it is precisely the ability to create it that is a skill worthy of note. Often this skill asks the question of what treasures lie underneath the armour, or is merely a projection though music of a psychological state, if we were to take it as merely a natural form. The closing track ‘Remember the Words’ is a quiet brittle folk moment, broken half way through by electronics emulating a warped harpsichord, this sums up the deliberate discord of the album.
Innerversitysound
*
