Kathryn Joseph - WE WERE MADE PREY.

I was not even aware of this artist prior to now, despite a handful of scattered references to past releases in end of year polls and the like.

But OMG this album. Simultaneously harrowing and immersive on the one hand and quiet and restrained on the other, like being trapped inside an iron lung - Kathryn’s voice is small and high and delicate and somehow also weathered and brittle, like if Adrianne Lenker laid down vocals for an album but then the tapes were lost on the side of a mountain for ten years; or as if a lifetime’s worth of patient existential dread slowly curdled and began to attack its host (though I don’t want to overstate this: Kathryn’s voice is fine!).

The music has a cathedralesque largesse that occasionally goes loud but mostly just threatens it: I could trace out a play space the borders of which are demarcated by Lisa Germano’s Geek The Girl, Scott Walker’s Tilt, Stina Nordenstam’s Dynamite, Veda Hille’s Spine, Martha Skye Murphy’s Um… part of me wants to say HEALTH, though I may be letting the use of capitalisation influence me unduly here.

Anyway, I’m in love. Can someone who’s familiar with Kathryn’s previous albums come and school me on what I have been missing?

Also Massive Attack’s ‘100th Window’ and Low’s ‘Ones and Sixes’ aka ivy get in here

otm about how i should be here

^^^^^

Apparently Kathryn writes the songs (presuambly on piano, most of the songs here sound like they have a treated piano or synthesisers at bass) and then works with Lomond Campbell (another Scottish artist I haven’t heard of) to build the soundscapes around them - drones, pulses, field noise, occasionally beats.

“HARBOUR.” is probably the album’s most pop moment, reminds me of The Knife’s “Silent Shout”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzXx3VqSa4U

But I think my current favourite is “BEFORE.”, which as far as I can tell is kind of a motivation-prompt, though it goes about achieving that objective in just about the most morbid fashion possible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFdwde9mHek

*at base