Wishbone Zoe "French of the Bird" [CD] SAD056
Wishbone Zoe - French of the Bird (Sad Cactus, 2020)
FOTB is a short, frenetic thesis about a common subject of our times that seeks to candidly illustrate anxiety's destructive capacity as many modern pieces do, and then to quickly dismantle the pedestal that it lives on when well-fed in both the individual and social heart. It has an accompanying video performance called "Here I'm" named for the album's continuing narrative piece.
In early 2019, Wishbone traveled from Western MA to Montreal, QC where she knew she had a few places to stay. The aim was to hole up in a severe version of winter and explore new creative territory--both visual and auditory--to find a foil to the aggressive performance anxiety that had started to disrupt her live shows and affect her wellbeing.
The resulting album was conceived in frustration of not being able to properly perform many of these pieces live due to recurring panic attacks, and was originally intended as a studio-nurtured assemblage of these ideas with which to bypass performance. As it continued to expand in size upon returning home, the piece--originally one big track--soon became a chimerical sonic exhibit of the nature of the obstacle itself. It mirrors anxious habits in the album's own fabric through a process of digital manipulation of organic samples called skrumble which is maybe the hyena's method of editing; a sloppy, glove-less compiling of sonic modules, in the same multitasking way through which you might build a tower out of mud and popcorn. The chaotic, repetitive samples, the overbearingly present layers of Wishbone's own voice, and the violent swings between order and chaos describe the unfairly suffocating nature of anxiety as well as a defiant and bratty pushing back against it, ignoring of it, and attempts to explode it as done by someone tired and bored of feeling like they need to stay sick in bed in order to move forwards positively.
With production and creative contributions by Max Goldstein (Tundrastomper/Fred Cracklin) and Andy Casella (Sodada, Shape Recording), the album reaches out from its collage core to span avant-garde vocal pieces, dance music, breakbeat, psychy folk, shoegaze and some big noise.
Track List:
1. Here I’m Pt. I: Signal
2. Here I’m Pt. II: Felt A Funeral, For Today
3. Here I’m Pt. III: Hhhhhorizontal, Not Vertical!
4. Holy Yell/ Mandelbrot Jive
5. Squeekbeat (feat. Maxshh)
6. Drivedrivedrive (feat. Maxshh)
7. Knife Tornado
8. Creepybeak’s Charge
9. Bats Bring In Eine Kleine Night
10. Microwaved Hawaii (So Long Toulouse)
11. A Bow In The Melt (feat. Maxshh)
12. Here I’m Pt. IV: Receptive
13. Return to Shadowchusetts