Albums by this artist

Hour Of The Trace (1999)

Jessica Bailiff

Hour Of The Trace

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» PIERO SCARUFFI | STAFF WRITER

Jessica Bailiff Hour Of The Trace Kranky, 1999 RiYL: Velvet Underground, Scrawl, Cat Power, Low

Hour Of The Trace, Jessica Bailiff's second collaboration with Low's Alan Sparhawk, refines the formula of her earlier releases. Bailiff focuses on a form of litany (hymn), first excessively slowed down and then filled with sonic eccentricities. In this form she truly excels. If the minimalist vortex of "Crush" makes you think for a second that Bailiff simply aims at aping Laurie Anderson, Toska clarifies the intent: the true protagonist of the album is her icy whisper, sort of asleep in a perennial trance.

The album is bottomward, from a sonic point of view. "After Hours" is like a children's singalong on a distorted guitar, but "Amnesia" sinks in catalectic stillness: a funereal beat surfaces over a hallucinogenic void, together with spectral wails of guitar, and eventually Bailiff's whisper fades away in a dream.

"Warren" is as slow, but relies on a solemn pace and an imposing wall of organ chords. "Across The Miles" is a lullaby that resonates of Nico's sweetest moments with the Velvet Underground, just at half the speed. These are weak melodies, left adrift in scanty harmonies -- the musical equivalent of aborted fetuses, songs that die before being born.

Half of the album is taken up by "Perception," a twenty-minute composition which begins like a suite of avant-garde electronics and after seven minutes detonates in a colossal guitar riff (and towards the end, turns into a minimalist raga). Bailiff may be trying to tell us she's not just a singer/songwriter.

PIERO SCARUFFI | Piero Scaruffi runs the exhaustive music database Scaruffi.com. A native of Italy, he has also been praised for his work on the General Theory of Relativity, formal theories of the mind, and artificial intelligence. And no, we aren't making that up.