Isnaj Dui: Sight Seeing
Fbox Records

Sight Seeing shows again that the music Katie English releases under her Isnaj Dui alias could have been created by no one but herself. Drawing upon a varied background that includes classical training in flute and studies in electroacoustic music, alternative tunings, and Balinese gamelan, the Halifax, UK-based artist produces material that is unmistakably hers. Labeling it electronica is not only inadequate but misleading; it would be more accurate to describe an Isnaj Dui production as a meticulously arranged blend of acoustic and electronic elements. Regardless, the results ravish the ears (and mind).

Issued on her own FBox imprint in a CD-and-sixteen-page booklet combination in an edition of 120 copies, the latest set arrives two years after her Rural Colors release, Poiesis, and explores in typically imaginative fashion issues relating to sight disorders. The topic carries with it special resonance for English, who has personal experience with visual problems and is thus able to bring a sympathetic understanding to the eye conditions she's translated into musical form. In fascinating manner, Sight Seeing begins with a theme that's followed by variations encompassing Nystagmus, Macular Degeneration, Posterior Vitreous Detachment, and others. In accordance with each, English modifies the melody, harmony, and rhythm of the initial theme to suggest how visual experience is altered by the condition. In the booklet, she includes details about the symptoms associated with each condition plus a repeating sample of music notation that through alteration suggests the corresponding visual effects.

Representative of 20/20 vision, “Theme” is characteristic of her sound and style. Building on a minimal percussive foundation, a lulling array of flutes and electronics gradually accumulates, with the intricate whole metronomically advancing like some magnificent timepiece. English thereafter manipulates that sinuous opening statement by removing, distorting, and degrading its parts, never so much that ties to the original are wholly severed but dramatically changed nonetheless. Flutes flutter amidst interference and alien chatter during “Charles Bonnet Syndrome” (associated with hallucinations), whereas the multiplicity of flutes in “Double Vision” naturally helps to convey the experience of seeing two of the thing focused on. Without straying too far from the originating material, “Keratoconus” suggests blurriness of vision through subtly applied erosions; “Glaucoma,” by comparison, conveys the loss of peripheral vision by accentuating the flute phrases at the music's center.

Stripping back the sounds presented in “Theme,” each variation assumes a slightly more minimalistic quality without sacrificing any of the opening setting's charm; the timings are smartly determined too, with each of the eight pieces lasting about five minutes at a time. All told, Sight Seeing presents a fascinating addition to her discography and is a project fully realized by the ever-imaginative English—a release as original in concept as its creator.

January 2020