Neotropic: The Absolute Elsewhere
Slowcraft Records

Nine years since the appearance of her last Neotropic release, Equestrienne (though a remix set based on it surfaced two years later), British songstress Riz Maslen returns with a powerful collection that effectively matches the brief label curator James Murray devised for his Slowcraft Presents series: “exceptional, unclassifiable music offered in carefully handcrafted limited editions.” A haunting, mystical, and highly personalized song cycle that draws from electronic, folk, and meditative drone genres, The Absolute Elsewhere, the second release in the series, certainly satisfies the first criteria; on presentation grounds, it's distinguished also, given that each of the 150 double-sleeve physical copies includes original artwork by Maslen and an individually numbered, handwritten dedication from the artist herself.

A concept album-like feel pervades the release when its seven parts are sometimes linked and when it begins with an overture. In keeping with that somewhat prog-like gesture, Maslen's Neotropic material exudes a quasi-operatic tone in the dramatic sweep of the vocal and instrumental design, though the settings, often brooding and ritualistic, assume a lamentation form when the recording veers into mournful territory, a locale it inhabits often.

Characterizing The Absolute Elsewhere as an electronic recording doesn't do it justice, however much Maslen might have used electronic means to create it. That aforesaid “Overture,” for example, relies as much on orchestral resources (muted horns and the like) in bringing this unsettling scene-setter into being; further to that, the integration of Maslen's angst-ridden vocal expressions into the foreboding design establishes a cryptic ambiance that subsequent parts pursue as fervently. Indicative of how critical that voice dimension is to the recording is exemplified by “Byzantium,” a meditative chant-drone generated exclusively using vocal elements.

While not an overtly political album, “Your War” does undeniably add that real-world dimension to the project. Rooted in Maslen's experiences as part of the 2003 anti-war demonstration in London that opposed the invasion of Iraq, the piece is arguably the album's most haunting. Strings, keyboards, and horns form a portentous instrumental base for multi-layered chants that allude to the horrors of war and the suffering of innocent children and families, after which the nightmares intensify during the harrowing folk-lullaby “Wreckage of Dreams.”

Beats seldom appear on The Absolute Elsewhere, Maslen more focused on fashioning ethereal soundscapes and personalizing them with distinctive vocalizing. Yet while that's true, one direct nod to electronica does arise in the form of “Nyolat,” a seven-minute, beat-throbbing dynamo that plays like some industrial techno-fashioned remix of the album's opening cut. “The Restless” ends the release on a timeless, folk-enchanted note, with lyrics describing a female traveler, warrior, mother, and worker who in many ways could be seen as a doppelgänger of Maslen herself.

That The Absolute Elsewhere should be so fully realized doesn't surprise. We're talking, after all, about an artist who's been producing forward-thinking electronic music since the ‘90s and whose resume includes collaborations with 4hero and Future Sound of London. There's certainly no indication that rust of any kind accumulated in the interim between that aforementioned 2009 release and the new one.

October 2018