Again we search into West Coast skies to an artist reaching for them. To Los Angeles, to Katie Gately, still in the throes of academe we find her, playing at new pop forms. This here record in July bloom is a bold and exciting taster of what is in store, around the corner. Six tracks of frightening ambition. A prime distillation in computer-music-pop. More alarming – this is her debut release, she has been making organised sound for just over a year.
Screech ,crumble, gurgle, crack…. the opening track “Ice” a storm of cluster tones and sequenced-bursts sets the standard. Then, to a potential Top10 smasher… gone mutant. “Last Day” is the first time we hear Katie’s voice, first looped and torn, then glowing, euphoric and beaming from deep inside a crashing-banging-beat system… I awoke from a little hole underneath the earth…
We follow similar patterns across this half-dozen. Fractured vocalisations, bittersweet harmonies, freaked alien voices all living, breathing in deep fried motherboards of acute computer programming and field sound. “Dead Referee” finds Katie on a post-apocalypse Basketball court, destroying waves of squeaks and crunches and cuts with a vocal refrain of high beauty, it Knifes through the noise.
Then, to “Left Half” the haunting reverb-calm before storm…. I’m gonna’ sew your face to my heart she whispers… “Stems” closes the record in a riot of tone and interference and alien acappella.
This is a new approach toward brighter days, mangled, beautiful, sun-reaching 23C Pop Musik for troubled times.