Emblem Album

w.m.o/r 31Through her work with Hototogisu and Double Leopards, Marcia Bassett has prudced, respectively, blasts of gravelly brut-noise and spiralling ages of privitive hypno-mysticism. Emblem, produced under the Zaimph moniker, recapitulates these two aesthetic polarities. The first track hails from the Hototogisu end of the spectrum, with tumbling guttural distortion and a distinctive mechanical underpinning, as if she's attached a mic to a cement mixer put through an overblown bass amp. The second piece reflects more of the Double Leopards sensibility, focuron a kosmiche tone float for a guitar and interwoven filter sweeps. At first Bassett stretches her guitar's cyclical patterns into a mournful bellow, but over the 30 minute piece, she allows the trim tales to coalesce into a leaden curtain of narcotic minimalism.

-Jim Haynes (The Wire)

Marcia Bassett