Ash Fure

This is arguably the solo debut from iconoclastic NYC composer Ash Fure, but it has been preceded by quite an impressive & eclectic run of ambitious performances and major accolades (an experimental opera, a Berghain performance, a Guggenheim Fellowship, etc.). Musically, Animal’s closest reference points are the building-shaking frequency sorcery of emptyset, the more abstract/deconstructed side of Pan Sonic/Mika Vainio, or one of Francisco López’s immersive sound installations. Conceptually and artistically, however, Fure is in a category all her own, as Animal was devised as a sort of performance/installation hybrid in which she plays an upturned subwoofer rig of 12 inch speaker cones with a large reflective sheet of polycarbonate. That sheet acts as a “real-time filter” for sound and light” and its “translucent material allows her to interact with lights built into the instrumental rig, and beam reflected sound and light around the exact architecture she’s in” (fittingly, Fure’s partner/collaborator Xavi Aguirre is an actual architect).

While that admittedly sounds very technological/futuristic, the album’s title is both intended as a bit of a swipe at artificial intelligence and as a literal reference to the sweat-drenched physicality of Fure’s performances and her desire to unleash sounds that “cause a bodily reaction” in her audience. Notably, the visceral nature of this work is inspired by Fure’s time haunting Detroit and Berlin techno clubs, but the resemblance to techno is otherwise limited to the constrained sound palette of “sub-bass, sonar clicks and white noise” that she seamlessly transforms into a series of pulsing psychoacoustic mirages. In more concrete terms, Animal is a shapeshifting fantasia of noise, drones, seismic bass, and percussion patterns that continually form new constellations as the various elements wax, wane, spatially pan, or fade in and out of focus. Sometimes the sounds can be meditative (slow-motion bass throbs) or eerily beautiful (glassy, feedback-like sounds), but the most stunning passages tend to be the crescendos that evoke everything from circling helicopters in a hallucinatory jungle warzone to a cloud of whirling knives to heaving industrial machinery slowly sinking in a bubbling tar pit with a laser light show accompaniment. In short, brilliant stuff all around. Hopefully I will someday manage to catch one of Fure’s actual performances, but Animal makes a great consolation prize in the meantime as both boldly visceral/unique sound art and one hell of a headphone album. 

Listen here.