Behind all the vocal manipulation and her often undefinable use of a spatial folk music, Julianna Barwick is nothing more than a storyteller. And though her songs forgo traditional narratives and instead focus on allowing the listener to inhabit the music rather than having it explained to them, Barwick still seems to have a need to tell us something and to take us to specific places. It’s this desire for connection and communication that drives her latest song, the circular and ever-changing “Pacing,” even further into the abstract sampled-based folk meditations that fueled her 2011 masterpiece The Magic Place. Adding graceful piano and minimalist waves of looped synths to her angelic vocal samples, she finds a middle ground between the eerie beauty of Angelo Badalamenti and the songs on her past records. “Pacing” comes from an upcoming 7″ on Suicide Squeeze, which hopefully is just a precursor to her proper follow up to The Magic Place. If the songs on any subsequent album are as calming and as disquieting as this one, it doesn’t seem as though she’ll have any problem sating her fans’ desire for more of her own particular brand of looped and sampled folk music.
The “Pacing” 7″ is out March 5th via Suicide Squeeze.
