The new record by Katie Lass, Hypnopomp, occupies a unique space. It creates its own space, frankly, pushing aside any genre label we may wish to pin on it. The soundscapes here are space-y too, I guess, and this HHBTM Records release is the first thing I've heard in months that's so resolutely iconoclastic.
"Shadow on the Shoreline" has guitar and bass in the foreground, and disembodied vocals floating in and around from the distance. It's stealthily unnerving. Elsewhere, "Nonpop" sounds like the world is being slowly unraveled. Even as the void within this tune expands, the more accessible (barely) "Can You Take Me Back" skirts at the edges of what we'd be tempted to call dream-pop, though the wonderful unease here might make this nigthmare pop for others.
The mix of this album by Warren Defever (His Name is Alive) is extraordinary, of course, and Hypnopomp practically begs to be listened to on headphones. There's a churning chasm within most of these cuts, with the majority defiantly refusing to be pretty. "Sunshine1 (Headspunstar)", however, mixes a Julie Cruise-like vocal performance from Katie Lass with drums and pulsing bass to chart a course very nearly towards the sun. That said, I think the real strengths of this album are within Katie's obfuscation of the obvious. Not one of the selections reaches for the easy pleasures of the kind of music we'd call shoegaze, and yet neither does anything here push us away with the clatter of industrial. There are faint echoes of Chris & Cosey pieces here, maybe, but for the most part this is all a cousin to His Name is Alive in the late Nineties, and by that I mean, music that sounds utterly and totally unlike 99% of what else you're listening to in 2022.
Hypnopomp is out now via HHBTM Records.
[Photo: HHBTM Records]