Intone: Voice Abstractions

2015

Intone: Voice Abstractions is a compilation concept album curated by Actual Russian Brides (Lull Studio) and released on Clan Analogue Recordings. It received a nomination for the 2016 Australian APRA/AMCOS Art Music Awards in the category Excellence in Experimental Music.

Intone showcases new audio production by electronic sound and music artists using the human voice as core sonic material. 21 tracks range Sydney — Melbourne — Brisbane — Russia — Macedonia — Japan — outer-space, across all levels from the meditative to the earsplitting. They span spoken word, sound art and many electronic music styles. From 19 artists in all, no selections are simply vocal+backing. The album attracted high-calibre, boundary-pushing producers such as Kusum Normoyle (Dark Mofo), Andy Rantzen (Itch-E and Scratch-E), Robert Sazdov (Fraunhofer Society), and Gail Priest (Metal Bitch Recordings).

Lull Studio's directors created 1 track each on this album: Actual Russian Khor by Baby Swindle (Lindsay Webb) and Ebisu by Su Veneer (Elena Knox).

Intone was launched at Grumpy's in Melbourne on November 5, 2015, and continues to receive significant radio play for an art music album. It was a top 10 feature record for PBSFM, played on TripleR, ThreeDradio, FBI and more, and favoured in popular Australian subversive podcast What Double J Should Sound Like (Jay Katz, Maynard, and Crooked Mouth).

Clan Analogue grew out of the Australian techno scene in the early 1990s and has always emphasised diversity of practice in electronic music. With Intone, creative tension between different approaches was pushed to a greater extreme than in any previous Clan release. Intone is also significant on the Australian music landscape for being the final project worked on by Robert “Bo” Boehm (Winduptoys), a notable producer and musician in Melbourne’s underground scene, who passed away shortly before the album’s release.

‘Intone’ manages to cover an extremely wide range of sonic territory within its thematic remit, with consistently interesting results.
Cyclic Defrost

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Intone reviewed by Cyclic Defrost
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