In the vein of Francis Plagne, who is namechecked in the bio, Melbourne based Penelope Skliros creates a ramshackle collection of sound images under the name of Vlady Vivaldi. Her second (as far as I can work out) release is a woozy, intoxicating collection of simple yet evocative drones, repetitions and lo-fi improvisations. It’s difficult to pick exactly how it’s all been created, but I’m going to hazard a fairly certain guess along the lines of a room full of cheap instruments, some microphones and loop pedals. ‘Bankruptcy’ layers mellow vocal drones over a simple xylophone and synthetic double bass riff. ‘Sovereign’ is far more chaotic laying its vocals over random shakes, bells and squeaks. A collection of tracks through the middle of the release – ‘Slide’, ‘Vault’ and ‘Routine 1′ – use a relatively lower recording quality with tape hiss aplenty to place you inside the cassette recorder as Skliros lets her Casiotone rhythms loose and pounds non-sequiters on her toy piano. ‘Symbiosis’ provides one of the highlights, a gradually building collection of glottal noises which are simultaneously amusing and mildly disturbing. The closest the album comes to traditional musical structure is in the final track, ‘Ain’t Not One Goddam Song That Can Make Me Break Down And Cry’, in which Skliros’ voice is multiplied into a choir intoning the title in three parts.
Simple and effective, Vlady Vivaldi is a diverse yet coherent exploration of nonsense and sound for the sake of pleasure. Its sum effect is completely charming. It also makes me think that I’d love to see Skliros doing this stuff in a live context. I imagine it would be chaotically charged joyfulness.
Adrian Elmer
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