Beau Deveraux’s eight tracks as Samantha Glass begin like a radio mystery with ambiguous, steady footsteps. Here, the Wisconsin-born, Austin-based artist leads listeners into a space shaped by a gender-fluid experience of anxiety and hope. In the idiom of dark wave, post-punk, and musique concrète, a synthetic voice announces “an angel dancing against reality” and heralds the gloomy, pulsing pull of “Cruel Anxiety” and “The Carpenter in Us All.” Simple, ominous synths become rhythmic, eventually accompanied with supplicant male voices in a solemn, low, melodic chant on “Putting the Male to Rest, Parts 1 & 2.” Computerized voices discuss “leaves ready to change colors” and being “ready to be what’s underneath me,” backed with a steaming, whirling, machine hiss. Aquatic sounds produced with an underwater contact mic layer vivid found sounds of chirping birds, nocturnal cicadas, katydids, and crickets on the vibrant if glum Nine Memories Between Impression & Imprint.
This article appears in November 9 • 2018.