White Vinyl
Minor shift in approach for Ulla Strauss on this latest long player for 3XL. Are we still calling this ambient? A bit of disambiguation is probably required. Strauss is pushing the human voice to the forefront this time out, a chopped and *glitched* approach that bears some resemblance to what the Tri-Angle lot were doing with Des'ree or whoever about ten years back, but displaying significantly less degrees of irony/knowingness. i'd argue it makes for a more 'active' listening experience, engaging the listener to pay attention to both texture and process. Is this where the ambient moniker becomes a misnomer? As with all of Strauss' output, there's a vaporous and prettied underbelly to much of Foam, but it's very much a detail rather than the main point this time out, Jan Jelinek-styled loops, delayed guitar parts and glassy synth flourishes overlaid with pitch-shifted vocals that seem to be beamed in from some half decayed memory of an R&B playlist algorithm. In lesser hands, it could serve as mere novelty, but Strauss is always effective at finding the human in the hyperreal, and her music never feels anything less than sincere, even when it's so process driven. That's a success in my book.
