Pitch Blender [SF04], by Zoë Mc Pherson

Pitch Blender [SF04]

by Zoë Mc Pherson

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ᴰᴶ ᴹᴱᴳᴬᶠᴬᵁᴺᴬ 🕊 Zoë does it again. cavorting, tumbling, chthonic acrobatics & pure audio magic. just listen! ₊‧⁺˖⋆ ❋* ˚✧༝`✦ ˑ ִֶָ 𓂃⊹ Favorite track: Wait.

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Full Digital Discography

8

releases

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Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Blistering, Pitch Blender Remixes [SF04RMX], Pitch Blender [SF04], Oscillate and Shimmer [SFX01], Grounding in outer space [SF03], XquisiteForce.collection/01 [XF01], States of Fugue [SF02], and String Figures Remixes [SF01RMX]. , and , .

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1.	On Fire 04:04	info	buy track
2.	The Spark 05:20		buy track
3.	Blender 04:52		buy track
4.	Unidentified Objects 02:36	lyrics	buy track
They had learned to sense their own vulnerability And admire it All the same They had domesticated their own species, by themselves. And as they found human remains, synthetic materials, They collected the pieces And created space to dream about them While they had developed deep understanding They were curious to know What the objects were for And what they meant Before the spark
5.	Lamella 06:28	lyrics	buy track
I stand still under water Observing the movement And the river washes me I'm kind of steady I have no feelings but I feel the tension Of every move Reverberating across our web Although I’m immobile I encounter many bodies And species I accumulate And I change shape All the time We’re all moving Dazzling speeds, Sure spinning around I’m carved and put to sand I might get rusty But I kind of like that Y’all Lamellas Lamellas Y’all Lamellas Lamellas You love controlling what exits what enters what exits What enters You love controlling The bodies the borders The bodies’ borders I hope we can just sustain each another Spread disperse now We’re dust Adjust now Spread disperse now We’re dust Adjust now Spreading sparse now… Y’all lamellas Lamellas Membranes vibrating Together
6.	Potentials 04:20		buy track
7.	Wait 04:30		buy track
8.	Power Dynamics 03:22		buy track
9.	Outside 04:14		buy track
10.	Lamella (instrumental) 07:42		buy track

about

Cast your mind back to February 2020 for a moment, when Berlin-based French-Irish sound artist Zoë Mc Pherson released their last album "States of Fugue". The world seemed less tangled somehow, and yet Mc Pherson's precision-engineered fusion of exploratory sound design and visceral club pressure seemed to hint at a cataclysmic event none of us were really expecting. Only a few weeks after its release the world changed forever, and the majority of us were grounded - forced to consider our lives and the movement (or lack thereof) surrounding us. The philosophy of this extended time period is welded into the bones of "Pitch Blender", Mc Pherson's supple third album. They have learned plenty in the last two years, and infuse all of that anxiety and spiky emotionality into a spread of tracks that sound as powerful in headphones as they do over a well-tweaked soundsystem, soldering vocals, environmental recordings and instrumental flourishes to unpredictably pneumatic, cybernetic beats.

Anyone that's caught one of Mc Pherson's energetic live performances over the last few months will have an idea of what "Pitch Blender" is made of. They're an artist who's somehow able to match the raw energy of post-punk and no-wave music with the brain-altering potential of the best experimental club tracks, vocalizing an incongruous post-lockdown reality over beats that sound as if they're in a permanent state of flux. 'On Fire' splutters to life in a frenetic patter of drums that blur into oddly soothing hoover sounds, snaking lysergically towards a drop that's teased constantly, and never comes. We're forced to wait until 'The Spark' for that, fighting through choppy, pitch-mangled guitar and rolling beats until a gruesome kick drum forces its way through the psilocybin mists and heaving Bristol-inspired bass clonks. Backed up with just the inverted traces of recognizable breaks, this vigorous pulse lies at the heart of "Pitch Blender", the driving force that powers Mc Pherson's sound even when it's only hinted at.

'Blender' is the moment where Mc Pherson show their full hand, using crackling sound effects, ghost vocals and uneven rhythms to build a textural landscape that's so evocative you can almost taste it. Squealing modular synth effects sound like gameshow buzzers being triggered in another dimension and propel the track forward - it's club music, just about, but Mc Pherson's motivation is world-building, and their world is colorful, abstract, and dizzyingly surreal. "Obsolete user," their voice echoes over driving airlock kicks. But they take a swift left turn with 'Lamella', reducing the kinetic club rhythms to a longing simmer and letting loose with powerful vocals, intoning with robotic, gender-fluxed intensity. On 'Wait', New York City's clacking crosswalk signal - already an effective club track on its own - is transformed into a reminder to slow down, juxtaposed with booming sub-heavy kicks, acidic synths and effervescent percussion that rattles in time with the vibrations. It's foley rave, built for pure psychedelic intensity to blur the line between real life and sonic fiction.

One of the album's most galvanic tracks, 'Power Dynamics' curves a double-time rhythm around breathless HQ sound design squiggles until it hits a polyrhythmic crescendo, striking a queasy balance between rave hedonism and ritualistic hand drum energy. It all builds towards eerie closing track 'Outside' that acts as an important wind down, spotlighting Mc Pherson's ability to operate outside of the rhythmic spectrum, using cinematic scrapes and flickering neon synths to create music that's tense but never terrifying. The track feels like the end credits of a particularly bewildering movie - something between the cyberpunk dystopia of "Ghost in the Shell" and the vivid, sky-scraping beauty of "Koyaanisqatsi". Mc Pherson has managed something special with "Pitch Blender": mashing together genres with rare focus, and sharpening their engineering skills to a fine point, they've concocted an antidote to contemporary malaise - a wakeup call that's begging us to loosen our limbs and move.

credits

released March 3, 2023

Written, performed, recorded and engineered by Zoë Mc Pherson
Additional mixing by James Ginzburg
Mastered by Joker
Cut by Lupo Lubich
Artwork by Lucie Rox
Vinyl design by Tatjana Stuermer
Text by John Twells

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