Julianna Barwick — Healing Is a Miracle [Japan Edition] (July 10, 2020)  ■  Julianna Barwick staví ráj svého vlastního designu. Album bylo nahráno v důsledku seismického posunu v jejím životě po přestěhování z New Yorku — kde žila 16 let — do Los Angeles. Zde nyní sídlí, získala název pro celovečeráček po přemýšlení o tom, jak se lidské tělo uzdravuje ze zázračných procesů, kterým věnujeme malou pozornost: „Pořežete si ruku, vypadá to docela špatně a o dva týdny později to vypadá, že se to nikdy nestalo ... Je to úžasné, víš?“
■  Výrazná zvuková meditace s reverbem po celé stopáži „Healing Is a Miracle“ je věc postavená na improvizaci a blízké příbuznosti s několika důvěrnými klávesovými gears, z nichž se roztáčí strhující, rozpínavý vesmír. Barwick navíc čerpá z příspěvků tří spolupracovníků, se kterými si během let vypěstovala hluboká přátelství: Jónsi (Sigur Rós), Nosaj Thing a Mary Lattimore; zde každý jemně šťouchá na okrajích útesu svého organicky vyvinutého zvuku.
■  Díky posílené sadě nástrojů se mohla přiblížit k Healing Is a Miracle s důrazem na fyzičnost zvuku — jak může basový tón rezonovat skrz tělo, nebo jediná nota může proniknout do každého póru — a umožnila některé z nejodvážnějších okamžiků alba. V závratné písni sirény „Květiny“ pummels své hyper~laminované vokální smyčky s puchýřovými syntetickými pulsy. Zatímco tvůrčí proces je zavázán syntézou a obvody, Healing zůstává připoutána k mystické říši přírody, zatímco její mnoho hlasů zvoní jako relikvie zjevení. Location: Los Angeles, CA
Album release: July 10, 2020
Record Label: Ninja Tune
Duration:     37:58
Tracks:
1. Inspirit   4:13 
2. Oh, Memory (ft. Mary Lattimore)   3:47 
3. Healing Is A Miracle   4:11 
4. In Light (ft. Jónsi)   6:06 
5. Safe   5:00 
6 Flowers   2:27 
7. Wishing Well   3:54 
8. Nod (ft. Nosaj Thing)   4:04
9. Inspirit (Takuya’s Ryūteki Dragons)   4:16
Review 
By Shannon Nico Shreibak
■  While wounds can be stitched and broken bones may mend, other types of injuries never fully heal; perhaps they linger as phantom pain or burrow deep into the brain’s pathways. It’s these imperceptible traumas — and the impossibility of recovery — that consume Julianna Barwick on her new fourth solo album, Healing Is a Miracle. The Los Angeles~based composer and vocalist cultivated her voice as a church chorister while growing up in Louisiana, and she began crafting her own music in the mid~2000s — building gauzy atmospheres in solitude with little more than her reverb~armored soprano.
■  For Healing Is a Miracle, her debut on vanguard electronic label Ninja Tune, Barwick enlisted a coterie of collaborators to add much~needed flesh to her sonic skeletons. Harpist Mary Lattimore shudders her way through “Oh, Memory,” the vocals of Sigur Rós founder Jónsi echo wistfully in imaginary canyons on “In Light,” and producer Nosaj Thing — who’s worked with the likes of Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper — helps Barwick close the barely 30~minute album with the indulgent vocal overdubs and muffled percussion of “Nod.” To make this material, Barwick set aside the primitive headphone setup she used on her previous releases and recorded using studio monitors for the first time. That bolstered toolbox allowed her to approach Healing Is a Miracle with an emphasis on the physicality of sound — how a bass tone can resonate through the body or a single note can penetrate every pore — and made possible some of the record’s boldest moments. On the dizzying siren song “Flowers,” she pummels her hyper~laminated vocal loops with blistering synth pulses.
■  While Barwick’s creative process is indebted to synthesis and circuitry, Healing remains tethered to the mystical realms of nature while her many voices ring like relics of revelation.
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About:
■  Julianna Barwick’s Circumstance Synthesis observes the shape of a day from a celestial vantage. Five floating suites trace morning through night, decorating space with a spectrum of layered vocals and synths that pool together and drift apart like clouds in the clearest blue.
■  Commissioned by Sister City, a new neighbor to Commend in the Lower East Side of NYC, Circumstance Synthesis originated as an environmentally responsive soundtrack. At this score’s performative core, generative music technology identified activity in the New York City sky through a camera perched on Sister City’s hotel’s rooftop, triggering musical progressions created by Barwick.
■  Barwick intentionally created unique chord structures and bass, synth, and vocal lines for each progression that would work holistically with one another. Barwick then anticipated different airborne activity, and actors, and designated each a leitmotif — an airplane, bright sun, clouds, birds. The generative score powered by Microsoft AI resounded live through Sister City’s lobby space, and its documentation now finds a home on the ground as the second installment of There, Commend’s new off site archival series.
■  Circumstance Synthesis is not only a response to the changing energies of the day, but also a provisional reminder to to take a moment, breathe, and admire the more subtle evolutions within and above our busy schedules. A sprightly vocal bouquet for “morning,” as you embark on your day’s journey. The warming gleam of peak sun on your face at “noon,” followed by a reservoir of relaxed shade in the “afternoon.” The rousing majesty of of an “evening” stroll and the soft, ruminative movements of “night.” Across its arc we feel the freshness of a rustling breeze, warmth of daylight, golden bath of sunset and the inky depths of its enveloping accompaniment.
■  Circumstance Synthesis encourages us to seek presence in our daily routine, attuned to the comings and goings in our environment but uplifted by higher purpose.
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Website: https://juliannabarwick.com/