The Good Noise

The latest release from Me Lost Me, the musical project of British artist Jayne Dent, is an extraordinarymélange of field recordings, acoustic instrumentation and electronic sounds. Haunting vocals accompany haunted sounds as Dent intertwines old and new in a bid to create a work of sonic art that will linger in the listener’s imagination. This approach works best during the textured Gothic tones of ‘The End of the World’, which is simultaneously weighty and ethereal, plaintive and menacing. The other standout track, ‘Nevergreen’, is more clearly electronic but maintains its folk roots with soaring, over dubbed, harmonies. It too seems to threaten and tease simultaneously.

Elsewhere Dent employs the natural hums, buzzes, squawks and rattles of acoustic instruments, finding them playful and profitable partners in creating hypnotic looping musical phrases, in one instance prompting the recorded off-the-cuff remark that gives the album its name. Some will find this album to be uneasy listening. This seems to be part of the intent of the artist, who appears determined to keep listeners on the edge of a seat, which might also be a precipice, a cliff edge below which the sea crashes repeatedly in inviting but unforgiving waves of sonic experimentation.