Asha Sheshadri
Whiplash
Boomkat Product Review:
Sound artist Asha Sheshadri's debut full-length vinyl release is a thing of beguiling beauty - a patchwork of vocal fragments, voice notes and literary excerpts that reconsiders the concept of the "confessional" with a sleeve that references Robert Ashley's groundbreaking 'Automatic Writing'. Mesmerising, confusing and a total revalation, it's sound poetry that inks suggestive lines between Robert Ashley, Kathy Acker, Graham Lambkin, William S. Burroughs and Félicia Atkinson.
In experimental music, the spoken word might be the most difficult element to work with. All too often it comes across as lofty and poorly realised - a great sound designer might not be a good writer, and a good writer might not have anything particularly interesting to say, or the technique required to make it work as sound art. It's unusual to have anything that sticks for too long even pass over our desks, which makes 'Whiplash' all the more special. Sheshadri has been developing her craft for years, cutting her teeth in New England's DIY scene and releasing a slew of tapes and collaborations while simultaneously making videos, installations and performances. This album is her first full-length solo vinyl statement, and it was worth the wait - her voice is confident and never overly imposing, treated carefully but not poised nostalgically. She's aware of her references, but not in their thrall, and uses the format to examine her own story, piecing together an uneven narrative from loose vocal fragments and surreal, dreamlike musical snippets.
Her words are spliced into near nonsense on the title track, layered across each other and played against tape hum and delicate, Satie-like piano noodles. There's a sense of mischief to her sound that's contemporary, while she keenly nods to sounds that have slipped into obscurity over the years. She admits that the record was pieced together in "bedrooms, living rooms, libraries, bars, airplanes, backyards and parks across North America," and that feeling of constructed spontaneity is important. The cellphone voice note is a well-worn aesthetic (the answerphone recording of the Zoomer generation?) and Sheshadri repurposes it, slicing into her samples as if they were tape loops. Her calm, deliberate cadence lulls us into a false sense of security - listen a little closer and there are deconstructions of trauma, musings on the nature of home and belonging, and loosely connected historical stories. On 'Stimulus Progression', she tells the tale of Charles Miles Brindley - who wrote a paper in 1951 titled 'Music in Industrial Plants' - over restrained noise and chilling muzak, while on 'A Holding Pattern', she's more naked and autobiographical, defining her process and interrupting the speech with haunted ambience and circling distortions.
Sometimes, Sheshadri uses different voices, like on 'Shipwreck', that cuts a broad East Coast drawl across echoing piano notes, or 'Supporting Characters', that begins with what sounds like distant family chatter over police radio snippets before lurching into a whispered, distorted chant. She skewers her own artistic practice on 'Irreplaceable', disrupting artspeak with Emergency Room beeps and white noise, and it's this tongue-in-cheek approach that's kept us hooked, listen after listen. Self-aware and robust, 'Whiplash' is a product of the contemporary art realm that's unafraid to question its validity or meaning. At its best, it parallels the kind of sound Robert Ashley approached on the flipside of 'Automatic Writing', when he unsettled listeners with 'Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon', using Cynthia Liddell's voice to recount a cryptic sexual experience. Sheshadri evokes a similarly enigmatic mood, outlining an era when so many of our encounters and interactions are broadcast digitally in real-time.
Crucial, revelatory listening - don't sleep on this one!
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Boomkat Product Review:
Sound artist Asha Sheshadri's debut full-length vinyl release is a thing of beguiling beauty - a patchwork of vocal fragments, voice notes and literary excerpts that reconsiders the concept of the "confessional" with a sleeve that references Robert Ashley's groundbreaking 'Automatic Writing'. Mesmerising, confusing and a total revalation, it's sound poetry that inks suggestive lines between Robert Ashley, Kathy Acker, Graham Lambkin, William S. Burroughs and Félicia Atkinson.
In experimental music, the spoken word might be the most difficult element to work with. All too often it comes across as lofty and poorly realised - a great sound designer might not be a good writer, and a good writer might not have anything particularly interesting to say, or the technique required to make it work as sound art. It's unusual to have anything that sticks for too long even pass over our desks, which makes 'Whiplash' all the more special. Sheshadri has been developing her craft for years, cutting her teeth in New England's DIY scene and releasing a slew of tapes and collaborations while simultaneously making videos, installations and performances. This album is her first full-length solo vinyl statement, and it was worth the wait - her voice is confident and never overly imposing, treated carefully but not poised nostalgically. She's aware of her references, but not in their thrall, and uses the format to examine her own story, piecing together an uneven narrative from loose vocal fragments and surreal, dreamlike musical snippets.
Her words are spliced into near nonsense on the title track, layered across each other and played against tape hum and delicate, Satie-like piano noodles. There's a sense of mischief to her sound that's contemporary, while she keenly nods to sounds that have slipped into obscurity over the years. She admits that the record was pieced together in "bedrooms, living rooms, libraries, bars, airplanes, backyards and parks across North America," and that feeling of constructed spontaneity is important. The cellphone voice note is a well-worn aesthetic (the answerphone recording of the Zoomer generation?) and Sheshadri repurposes it, slicing into her samples as if they were tape loops. Her calm, deliberate cadence lulls us into a false sense of security - listen a little closer and there are deconstructions of trauma, musings on the nature of home and belonging, and loosely connected historical stories. On 'Stimulus Progression', she tells the tale of Charles Miles Brindley - who wrote a paper in 1951 titled 'Music in Industrial Plants' - over restrained noise and chilling muzak, while on 'A Holding Pattern', she's more naked and autobiographical, defining her process and interrupting the speech with haunted ambience and circling distortions.
Sometimes, Sheshadri uses different voices, like on 'Shipwreck', that cuts a broad East Coast drawl across echoing piano notes, or 'Supporting Characters', that begins with what sounds like distant family chatter over police radio snippets before lurching into a whispered, distorted chant. She skewers her own artistic practice on 'Irreplaceable', disrupting artspeak with Emergency Room beeps and white noise, and it's this tongue-in-cheek approach that's kept us hooked, listen after listen. Self-aware and robust, 'Whiplash' is a product of the contemporary art realm that's unafraid to question its validity or meaning. At its best, it parallels the kind of sound Robert Ashley approached on the flipside of 'Automatic Writing', when he unsettled listeners with 'Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon', using Cynthia Liddell's voice to recount a cryptic sexual experience. Sheshadri evokes a similarly enigmatic mood, outlining an era when so many of our encounters and interactions are broadcast digitally in real-time.
Crucial, revelatory listening - don't sleep on this one!
Boomkat Product Review:
Sound artist Asha Sheshadri's debut full-length vinyl release is a thing of beguiling beauty - a patchwork of vocal fragments, voice notes and literary excerpts that reconsiders the concept of the "confessional" with a sleeve that references Robert Ashley's groundbreaking 'Automatic Writing'. Mesmerising, confusing and a total revalation, it's sound poetry that inks suggestive lines between Robert Ashley, Kathy Acker, Graham Lambkin, William S. Burroughs and Félicia Atkinson.
In experimental music, the spoken word might be the most difficult element to work with. All too often it comes across as lofty and poorly realised - a great sound designer might not be a good writer, and a good writer might not have anything particularly interesting to say, or the technique required to make it work as sound art. It's unusual to have anything that sticks for too long even pass over our desks, which makes 'Whiplash' all the more special. Sheshadri has been developing her craft for years, cutting her teeth in New England's DIY scene and releasing a slew of tapes and collaborations while simultaneously making videos, installations and performances. This album is her first full-length solo vinyl statement, and it was worth the wait - her voice is confident and never overly imposing, treated carefully but not poised nostalgically. She's aware of her references, but not in their thrall, and uses the format to examine her own story, piecing together an uneven narrative from loose vocal fragments and surreal, dreamlike musical snippets.
Her words are spliced into near nonsense on the title track, layered across each other and played against tape hum and delicate, Satie-like piano noodles. There's a sense of mischief to her sound that's contemporary, while she keenly nods to sounds that have slipped into obscurity over the years. She admits that the record was pieced together in "bedrooms, living rooms, libraries, bars, airplanes, backyards and parks across North America," and that feeling of constructed spontaneity is important. The cellphone voice note is a well-worn aesthetic (the answerphone recording of the Zoomer generation?) and Sheshadri repurposes it, slicing into her samples as if they were tape loops. Her calm, deliberate cadence lulls us into a false sense of security - listen a little closer and there are deconstructions of trauma, musings on the nature of home and belonging, and loosely connected historical stories. On 'Stimulus Progression', she tells the tale of Charles Miles Brindley - who wrote a paper in 1951 titled 'Music in Industrial Plants' - over restrained noise and chilling muzak, while on 'A Holding Pattern', she's more naked and autobiographical, defining her process and interrupting the speech with haunted ambience and circling distortions.
Sometimes, Sheshadri uses different voices, like on 'Shipwreck', that cuts a broad East Coast drawl across echoing piano notes, or 'Supporting Characters', that begins with what sounds like distant family chatter over police radio snippets before lurching into a whispered, distorted chant. She skewers her own artistic practice on 'Irreplaceable', disrupting artspeak with Emergency Room beeps and white noise, and it's this tongue-in-cheek approach that's kept us hooked, listen after listen. Self-aware and robust, 'Whiplash' is a product of the contemporary art realm that's unafraid to question its validity or meaning. At its best, it parallels the kind of sound Robert Ashley approached on the flipside of 'Automatic Writing', when he unsettled listeners with 'Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon', using Cynthia Liddell's voice to recount a cryptic sexual experience. Sheshadri evokes a similarly enigmatic mood, outlining an era when so many of our encounters and interactions are broadcast digitally in real-time.
Crucial, revelatory listening - don't sleep on this one!
Boomkat Product Review:
Sound artist Asha Sheshadri's debut full-length vinyl release is a thing of beguiling beauty - a patchwork of vocal fragments, voice notes and literary excerpts that reconsiders the concept of the "confessional" with a sleeve that references Robert Ashley's groundbreaking 'Automatic Writing'. Mesmerising, confusing and a total revalation, it's sound poetry that inks suggestive lines between Robert Ashley, Kathy Acker, Graham Lambkin, William S. Burroughs and Félicia Atkinson.
In experimental music, the spoken word might be the most difficult element to work with. All too often it comes across as lofty and poorly realised - a great sound designer might not be a good writer, and a good writer might not have anything particularly interesting to say, or the technique required to make it work as sound art. It's unusual to have anything that sticks for too long even pass over our desks, which makes 'Whiplash' all the more special. Sheshadri has been developing her craft for years, cutting her teeth in New England's DIY scene and releasing a slew of tapes and collaborations while simultaneously making videos, installations and performances. This album is her first full-length solo vinyl statement, and it was worth the wait - her voice is confident and never overly imposing, treated carefully but not poised nostalgically. She's aware of her references, but not in their thrall, and uses the format to examine her own story, piecing together an uneven narrative from loose vocal fragments and surreal, dreamlike musical snippets.
Her words are spliced into near nonsense on the title track, layered across each other and played against tape hum and delicate, Satie-like piano noodles. There's a sense of mischief to her sound that's contemporary, while she keenly nods to sounds that have slipped into obscurity over the years. She admits that the record was pieced together in "bedrooms, living rooms, libraries, bars, airplanes, backyards and parks across North America," and that feeling of constructed spontaneity is important. The cellphone voice note is a well-worn aesthetic (the answerphone recording of the Zoomer generation?) and Sheshadri repurposes it, slicing into her samples as if they were tape loops. Her calm, deliberate cadence lulls us into a false sense of security - listen a little closer and there are deconstructions of trauma, musings on the nature of home and belonging, and loosely connected historical stories. On 'Stimulus Progression', she tells the tale of Charles Miles Brindley - who wrote a paper in 1951 titled 'Music in Industrial Plants' - over restrained noise and chilling muzak, while on 'A Holding Pattern', she's more naked and autobiographical, defining her process and interrupting the speech with haunted ambience and circling distortions.
Sometimes, Sheshadri uses different voices, like on 'Shipwreck', that cuts a broad East Coast drawl across echoing piano notes, or 'Supporting Characters', that begins with what sounds like distant family chatter over police radio snippets before lurching into a whispered, distorted chant. She skewers her own artistic practice on 'Irreplaceable', disrupting artspeak with Emergency Room beeps and white noise, and it's this tongue-in-cheek approach that's kept us hooked, listen after listen. Self-aware and robust, 'Whiplash' is a product of the contemporary art realm that's unafraid to question its validity or meaning. At its best, it parallels the kind of sound Robert Ashley approached on the flipside of 'Automatic Writing', when he unsettled listeners with 'Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon', using Cynthia Liddell's voice to recount a cryptic sexual experience. Sheshadri evokes a similarly enigmatic mood, outlining an era when so many of our encounters and interactions are broadcast digitally in real-time.
Crucial, revelatory listening - don't sleep on this one!
Out of Stock
Boomkat Product Review:
Sound artist Asha Sheshadri's debut full-length vinyl release is a thing of beguiling beauty - a patchwork of vocal fragments, voice notes and literary excerpts that reconsiders the concept of the "confessional" with a sleeve that references Robert Ashley's groundbreaking 'Automatic Writing'. Mesmerising, confusing and a total revalation, it's sound poetry that inks suggestive lines between Robert Ashley, Kathy Acker, Graham Lambkin, William S. Burroughs and Félicia Atkinson.
In experimental music, the spoken word might be the most difficult element to work with. All too often it comes across as lofty and poorly realised - a great sound designer might not be a good writer, and a good writer might not have anything particularly interesting to say, or the technique required to make it work as sound art. It's unusual to have anything that sticks for too long even pass over our desks, which makes 'Whiplash' all the more special. Sheshadri has been developing her craft for years, cutting her teeth in New England's DIY scene and releasing a slew of tapes and collaborations while simultaneously making videos, installations and performances. This album is her first full-length solo vinyl statement, and it was worth the wait - her voice is confident and never overly imposing, treated carefully but not poised nostalgically. She's aware of her references, but not in their thrall, and uses the format to examine her own story, piecing together an uneven narrative from loose vocal fragments and surreal, dreamlike musical snippets.
Her words are spliced into near nonsense on the title track, layered across each other and played against tape hum and delicate, Satie-like piano noodles. There's a sense of mischief to her sound that's contemporary, while she keenly nods to sounds that have slipped into obscurity over the years. She admits that the record was pieced together in "bedrooms, living rooms, libraries, bars, airplanes, backyards and parks across North America," and that feeling of constructed spontaneity is important. The cellphone voice note is a well-worn aesthetic (the answerphone recording of the Zoomer generation?) and Sheshadri repurposes it, slicing into her samples as if they were tape loops. Her calm, deliberate cadence lulls us into a false sense of security - listen a little closer and there are deconstructions of trauma, musings on the nature of home and belonging, and loosely connected historical stories. On 'Stimulus Progression', she tells the tale of Charles Miles Brindley - who wrote a paper in 1951 titled 'Music in Industrial Plants' - over restrained noise and chilling muzak, while on 'A Holding Pattern', she's more naked and autobiographical, defining her process and interrupting the speech with haunted ambience and circling distortions.
Sometimes, Sheshadri uses different voices, like on 'Shipwreck', that cuts a broad East Coast drawl across echoing piano notes, or 'Supporting Characters', that begins with what sounds like distant family chatter over police radio snippets before lurching into a whispered, distorted chant. She skewers her own artistic practice on 'Irreplaceable', disrupting artspeak with Emergency Room beeps and white noise, and it's this tongue-in-cheek approach that's kept us hooked, listen after listen. Self-aware and robust, 'Whiplash' is a product of the contemporary art realm that's unafraid to question its validity or meaning. At its best, it parallels the kind of sound Robert Ashley approached on the flipside of 'Automatic Writing', when he unsettled listeners with 'Purposeful Lady Slow Afternoon', using Cynthia Liddell's voice to recount a cryptic sexual experience. Sheshadri evokes a similarly enigmatic mood, outlining an era when so many of our encounters and interactions are broadcast digitally in real-time.
Crucial, revelatory listening - don't sleep on this one!
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