Self-loss and self-rediscovery are two ends of the same dowsing rod. Imogen Mason, one third of the alternative rock band Voka Gentle, knows this. Her latest record pit of mine is an earthily complex, tectonic slice of indie electronica, a desert walkabout made after a discomfiting period of stifled ambition and loving duty.
The new album is a less maximalist record than the 2021 Voka Gentle debut Writhing! Its barky, russety sound suggests individuation, of the kind that can only arise through such tense elastications of the self. The tremulant, high, pulse-width combo organs of ‘mother sugar’ and the dragged triplets of ‘humpback whale’ suggest it, conjuring images of the artist with hair let down, sat cross-legged, in a remote cabin in the woods, programming raw, cathartic beats into a dust-caked sampler; allowing herself an outlet after a testing time. But this Walden-esque archetype of antimodern, recuperative seclusion, away from life’s slings and arrows, doesn’t apply so fitly here. In fact, in 2023, after being relieved of her duty, Mason did escape, but to an even wilder place: the high desert of Taos, New Mexico, not the dewy woods.
The desert is an apter metaphor for what might be going on here. As Mason sings on the broken beat-informed ‘beggars belief’, “Break the illusion”. The record’s best moments reflect the capacity to self-quench even when cast away in psychologically arid climates, devoted without the promise of reciprocity. Take ‘first love’, which riffles through drum machine claves, liquid sloshings, and echo-rounded vocals. Mason’s lyrics liken carer relationships to first loves, since both define and test the limits of the self, threatening loss. Yet, born of dunes, the track sounds like a self-generative oasis, abounding in fruits and water. Low, gourdy hits and salvaged writhings point to potable liquids, lying dormant below sonic husks. ‘The reaction’ functions similarly, coming as a melee of trills and tweezer EDM saws, and is even more cactaceous in sound. But its make-do vibe still packs a heckuva punch. Again, its energy must come from somewhere.
Desert aquifers exist, but they’re harder to find or access. pit of mine hears Mason auscultate the terrain, then dig down, with expert stone tools, until a geyser is loosed: the piano-drenched coda ‘melancholy blues’, where grief and catharsis emulsify in the liquid that jets out. “I only meant to help, I didn’t mean to offend…” It’s a note of latent salubrity. We can get at its nectar only when we listen through the roughness.
