The Doll – Hiss

Artist: The Doll
Title: Hiss
Keywords: experimental avant-garde field recording hiss musique concrete noise noiselife sound art United States
Label: Big Sleep Records

Throw traditional instruments out of the window as The Doll proofs over here with Hiss that we are at an age that we actually don’t need them anymore. She will make sure you will acknowledge this, as certain objects and sound recordings will simply proof that there are entire different ways to create melodies, drums and entire atmospheres. Let’s go for a little walk through shall we?

Bubble wrap gets nicely squeezed out for the satisfying sound that is most irresistible to produce by anyone who has ever come close to the phenomenon. The Doll has captured this comfortable habit and laced it up with an ambience that feels closely related to the urinoirs of an public restroom. Underneath it all we are kindly excited with the exciting buzz fuzz that comes across as a highly extracted speedboat engine. A mixture of togetherness that magically ties all these things together and feels like something that should always have been made for each other.

In ‘saw’ The Doll covers the coverage of a sound formula that twinkles in the area of acoustics. As we can not see how it is done, we presume it’s the artist in her magical lab creating an actual playing instrument out of an saw. She plays it like something that sits in the middle of an acoustic instrument like a guitar or a meditational gamelan-like bowl. It’s like listening to experimental world music with all its melodically faces of cultural wonder while at the same time being channeled by a previously unheard of melodic instrument.

When The doll goes for a ‘Wheel’ the coolness of experimental sounds come in even more prevalent. I imagine her turning a wheel, but it is wired in such a way that completely new sounds (that had not yet have surfaced into the world) are being born in the open. The crazy thing is that it’s sounds ready to pop into a techno acid environment. It has that flubber thing going on that is wet, light and bassy; an experiment that I would love to hear implanted in other musical genres. All these experiments of new ‘instruments’ will make any sound engineer itch for more!

The Doll also manages to treat ‘static’ into something highly pleasurable. It feels as if there is some kind of phone interference in there which she smartly uses to create a rhythm, but also the main woozy sound has an excellent hypnotic element to it. It’s like being alone in the launderette while one single machine turns around and your head is stuck between the soft washing as it’s stacked to the glass window of the device…. does my description make any sense? I think it does! In any case it found utterly comfortable and cozy!

Talking about comfortable and coziness, the next track is a sound collage titled ‘home sweet home’. A masterful production of recordings all smitten together as one. A car alarm, birds, the air all coming in through an open standing window and probably the sound of some joyful amount of tap dancing in the kitchen!

Even ‘silence’ (a thing that truthfully doesn’t exist!) is being treated by The Doll on this must have tape named ‘Hiss’. It’s as if she took an amount of potent silence and placed it under a special audio microscope, blew it up and explores all the actual sounds that are making this so called ‘silence’. Guess what? There is a entire world captured in there!

In ‘Lean’ we can hear the doll putting down a gritty work of self expression. This time we are left clueless what she uses to generate this sound, but it feels utterly punk, nasty and at the same time quite extraordinarily real and moody. It’s going well with the sound of her playing ‘Radiator’ which she transforms into a instrument that sounds like it’s beating the drums of war. When I close my eyes I could see a crazy army band parading and marching in. They are direct, focussed and come with an arsenal of ammunition and focus; ready to crush any enemy. A strong ending for a tape that will put traditional music and their boring instruments in the corners of shadow & put innovative ideas and unconventional things in the spotlight of potent music & sound makers! You should not miss out on this Hiss:
https://bigsleeprecords.bandcamp.com/album/hiss
<KN>