Over the course of her self-titled cassette and her debut full-length LP, Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist Marie Davidson sketched out an idiosyncratic vision of electronic performance laced with claustrophobic technoid percussion, baroque synth programming, and dissociative vocal incantations. Cast at once as the physical presence shouting out with a microphone in hand from the depths of her arrangements, and as the detached arranger hunched over LED display screens in some remote laboratory, Davidson has proved her command over each tiered aspect of her craft — equally capable of thrilling in real time as a human being on stage before you, or as the spectral presence of fingers that once traced the dials and sliders of her hardware.
Un Autre Voyage, Davidson’s new LP on Holodeck Records, tempers her established MO with a battery of refined performance tactics and productional embellishments, yielding some of her most directly affecting material to date. If previous sessions felt more like explorations of the boundaries of repetitive grooves, which allowed her to toast and whisper as a free-floating voice over a clattering system of machines, new tracks like “Insomnie” unfold as precise harmonic structures, galvanized by massive chord changes and blossoming layers of arpeggiated synthesis. As ever, Davidson’s voice roots us to the spot in a state of narcotic fascination — but her spoken missives here swell in an elegant symbiosis with the arc of her arrangement.
Un Autre Voyage is now available from Holodeck Records.
• Marie Davidson: https://mariedavidson.bandcamp.com
• Holodeck Records: http://holodeckrecords.com
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