duggup

Artist: Julianna Barwick
Website: http://www.myspace.com/juliannabarwick or www.juliannabarwick.com/
Track Name: unt3

There isn’t a lot of info about Julianna Barwick on either her MySpace site or her personal website, both are decidedly short on information. I can tell you she is from New York, classes her music as Other / Experimental and does know how to mess with your perception of what voices do.

On her short album “Sanguine”, Barwick creates tracks by looping short vocal phrases with a guitar pedal* and layering them up into a choir of one, but as each layer is added the effect is truly wonderful. The album has 13 tracks and clocks in at about 24 minutes.

Now the use of loops and layers has been around since tape recorders started, Les Paul was a master in the early days of tape technology and I can still remember the first time I heard Laurie Anderson do “O SuperMan” but Julianna takes this idea in a different, more spontaneous direction.

Now fortunately for us all, over at http://mafama.blogspot.com/ there is an interview by Sérgio Hydalgo (I have also added his blog to my weekly reading list). In the interview she reveals a bit of her back story and there is are a couple glorious live performances. My favourite is the ironically titled “Wish I Could Create”, it is totally captivating stuff. She also does a live version “Dancing With Friends” which is superior to the album version by a mile.

This is really interesting music and seriously worth your time. Have a listen to the stuff at MySpace site and definitely give the interview a listen. Let me know what you think.

* for the quippies out there she uses a Boss RC-50 Loop Station.