- Newcastle-based label Altered States Tapes has just delivered a new series of musical gems on the humble cassette tape format, with new releases from Australian artists like Yuta Matsumura of Sydney new-wave punk band Orion and the latest from Simon J Karis of Melbourne’s own prolific tape label Nice Music. Of the new releases though, the Untitled debut solo release from Melbourne artist YL Hooi stands out for a few reasons.
Being a familiar part of the local musical and artistic fringe for an untraceable, but ostensibly substantial time, Hooi has in recent years become one of the more prolific artists in Australia working in the highly specified realm of post-punk influenced, exploratory sound. Recently she has contributed design work to records by bands like Low Life and Exek and performed in groups including Queens Of The Circulating Library with Jonnine Standish of HTRK and Th Duo with frequent collaborator Tarquin Manek, who also contributed production duties and a note of clarinet to Untitled. A full-length release from Hooi comes as something of a pleasant surprise, with not much recorded output and most of it being collaborative and clandestine in nature, there’s been little hint at a developed, independent outing taking shape behind the scenes until now.
Each track on Untitled meshes a divergent array of sources into dark and dreamy soundscapes, often leaning heavily into dub instrumentals and field recording. Hooi’s singing is instrument-like and often effect driven, delivering dynamic washes of echoing dulcet tones.
It’s clear from the outset that Hooi’s own music has been inextricably shaped by those many collaborations, with a shared set of influences forming an affective blueprint of the record. There’s a familiar mix of elements that can picked out - post-punk adjacent pop, avant-garde composition, industrial ambient and dub reggae. But the familiarity doesn’t detract from the effectiveness of Hooi’s own synthesis.
Hooi’s solo work seems to embrace those starting points wholeheartedly in a way that creates space to go into and elevate them to her own unique ends. This comes across most clearly in her abstracted cover of the reggae duo Love Joys song Stranger, where Hooi uses a looping synth warble, with dissolving layers of bird songs, horn-like synths and guitar to bend the source material to a distant and unpredictably powerful end.
The record finds its grounding in a series of longer, vocal driven tracks, which sit between shorter instrumental diversions. The synth drones of Lucky, the solitary field recording of E Park or the sonically dense and melancholic When You’re Up There. Echoing sounds of barking dogs flow in a moody guitar line, all paced in such a way that disparate elements of preceding tracks flow from one to another making for evocative juxtapositions. Deployed sparingly, the voice adds to an unfurling narrative flow. Her words are totally indiscernible and unimportant among the plodding bass line and sinister synths of Strobe Lite. While a sense of longing and heartache permeates from the whispers across the album. In particular on the track W/O Love, its sharp electronic percussion and vocals underpinned by dark synth pulses and wandering organ-like melodies like an acid-fried Sade.
Hooi’s songwriting is crafted in a way that the absence of voice is not often noticed, but felt as its natural companion. Capping off what is boldly understated and well-crafted debut, the closing track Always In Jokes, revels in the arbitrariness of maintaining that dialogue. “I feel like we don’t speak, when we speak it’s always in jokes”.
- Jaden Gallagher.