Voice Actor & Squu - Lust (1)

BACK IN PRINT! And these records don't tend to hang around too long..  What we said a few weeks back when it first came in: As is consistent with the presentation of the Voice Actor project from day one, little in the way of biographical detail has been provided in promotion of this second record, a collaboration with hitherto unknown Welsh producer, Squu - indeed, the press release accompanying Lust forgoes the usual PR spiel in favour of a short essay on the sensuality of, you guessed it, farming. Explication is by no means a requirement, though given such intentional aesthetic subterfuge, I am thankful for the illuminating interview Noa Kurzweil (aka Voice Actor) recently gave to First Floor, not least because there's a slightly surprising shift in focus with this new collection that benefits from a little context. That perceived shift can mostly be explained by the absence of Levi Lanser, the only other writer credited on the first Voice Actor record, and the introduction of the noticeably different sonic approaches of Squu. In short, Kurzweil hasn't made the same record again, which given the sheer volume of tracks (112!) that made up Sent From My Telephone, wasn't necessarily always going to be the case - if you're on to a good thing, why change tact? It's to the artist's credit they've opted against the path of least resistance. Fans of previous output are still going to find plenty to appreciate here, but Kurzweil's style of dreamstate ASMR is now framed a little differently, coloured by slow-mo glassy synths and trance-y arpeggios that play like some early-2010s production blasted on methoxetamine, which doesn't lead you too far from the ghost in the machine wooziness of Exael, Ben Bondy et al. The overall effect is still somewhat disassociative, but Kurzweil is now even more obscured in the mix, her words bordering on glossolalia, a seductive textural element (it's there in the title) as opposed to narrative device. Sent From... was such an unprecedented, monolithic statement it could have proved an albatross. In changing lanes and shaking up the collaborations, Kurzweil has savvily opened up the future possibilities for Voice Actor. Such artists become easy to trust.