【译】Pitchfork评Eartheater - IRISIRI
在她的第三张专辑中，这位皇后区的实验音乐家探索了女性声音挑战品味和规范的方法，并突破了公认的音乐语言的界限。
On her third album, the Queens experimental musician explores the way women’s voices can challenge the norms of taste and decorum and push past the boundaries of accepted musical language.
Alexandra Drewchin(也就是eartheater)讲述了对立的力量。她的歌曲将吉他、小提琴等原声乐器与刺耳的电子鼓和怪异的合成器音色交织在一起；她倾向于将惊人的美丽与尖刻的的丑陋并置。这样看来，她的第三张专辑《IRISIRI》与前两张专辑对比简直区别太大了，IRISIRI之前的专辑《Metalepsis》和《RIP Chrysalis》（均于2015年发行）都是具有催眠性的氛围音乐，只会让人恍惚甚至昏睡，而IRISIRI是一张能让听众刚陷入恍惚状态，就出现一声巨响或一声听起来与背景完全不协调的尖叫而让他们从中惊醒的专辑。
Alexandra Drewchin’s music as Eartheater deals in opposing forces. Her songs interlace acoustic instruments, like guitar and violin, with harsh electronic drums and eerie synthesizer figures; she tends to juxtapose startling beauty with cutting ugliness. Her third album, IRISIRI, exacerbates the contrasts she set up across her first two records. Where her previous albums, Metalepsis and RIP Chrysalis (both released in 2015), were often hypnotic and ambient, IRISIRI demands a new kind of attention. It’s the sort of record that lulls listeners into a trance only to snap them out of it with a blast of noise or an incongruous shriek.
从采样的黑胶播放的炒豆声1到电吉他loops2，在IRISIRI中，相互碰撞的元素随处可见。比如将人声做得断断续续而又非常尖锐的“MTTM”，不禁让人想起Nicolas Jaar犀利的groove，而“C.L.I.T.”有着足够的摇滚精神，它听起来像是一首消减了锋芒的EMA的歌曲。Drewchin喜欢把各种体裁相互混合在一起，不过在这张专辑中，打破了最多规则的却是她的声音。她知道尖叫本身并不是一种挑衅行为，因为人声不仅仅可以发出公认的“人声”----特别是一个女人的声音，这超越了公认的音乐语言的界限。
注：1. 最显著的例子是Madonna – Erotica前奏的声音，这张专辑在第四首Inkling中有所体现。
2. 实际用途是满足商业场景需求而制作的简单的总是在重复的曲子，说白了就是由一段或几段小节的重复而拼出来的一首现做现用的歌。
From crackling vinyl samples to electric guitar loops, IRISIRI boasts a wide variety of clashing textures. Certain moments, like the stuttering “MTTM,” find kinship with Nicolas Jaar’s searching grooves, while “C.L.I.T.” has enough of a rock edge that it could be an EMA track run through a centrifuge. Drewchin delights in scrambling genre signifiers, but it’s her vocal work on this album that breaks the most rules. She knows that a scream is not in itself an act of defiance, and that there are other sounds a voice can produce—especially a woman’s voice—that jut past the boundaries of accepted musical language.
想要证明她的唱功似的，Drewchin在专辑的每一首歌里面都加上了人声，她可以唱出相当高的高音，就像她在“Trespasses”中以高音来对抗听起来并不顺耳的合成器一样，这样高的人声的加入反而为这首歌蒙上了一层神圣色彩，在整张专辑中，她还加入了尖叫、傻笑和呻吟，所有这些声乐技巧都有被音乐界称为“烦人”的风险——这是一个远比“粗鲁”、“刺耳”或“令人愤怒”更轻蔑的形容词，但她的反常规却为音乐界注入了一股全新的力量。在“Inclined”中，当她在她的音域边缘发出嘶哑的声音时，她质疑为什么人们会以一种固定的方式来理解女性的声音。以一把小提琴的loop作背景而尽量使这首歌变得“得体”之后，她一直在压制自己的声音，以缺氧的方式发声，并以“错误”的方式摩擦声带。这就好像一个男人曾经告诉她，她的歌声令人讨厌，她并没有因此而变为常规的发声方式，而是反其道而行之，做出了所有可能激怒“父权制的耳朵”的人声元素。
Drewchin sings throughout IRISIRI, often in ways that prove her technical ability. She can hit high notes and she can evoke the timbre of sacred music, as she does against discordant electronics on “Trespasses.” She also screeches, simpers, and whines throughout the album, all vocal techniques that run the risk of being called “annoying”—a far more dismissive adjective to apply to a woman singing than “abrasive,” “harsh,” or “angry.” But she finds life in that confrontational space. When, on “Inclined,” she cracks her voice on the outer edges of her range, she calls into question why women’s voices are heard the way they are. A violin loops in the background, crowding Drewchin’s delivery with the suggestion of decorum, all while she’s cramping her voice, starving it of oxygen, and rubbing it the “wrong” way. It’s as though a man once told her she sang obnoxiously and, rather than clean up her tone, she decided to double down on all the elements that might irritate the patriarchal ear.
Eartheater 在许多曲目中暗示了女性特质对男性主导的世界秩序构成的威胁，其中表现最显著的是“Inhale Baby”，该曲目的人声主要来自位于洛杉矶的实验二人组 Odwalla1221。 “吸入浅粉红色/呼出红色（Inhale baby pink/Exhale red）”Chloe Maratta 重复道，仿佛在敦促她的同伴们将她们由于压迫而不得不表现出的难以制止的温顺化为炽热的愤怒。片刻之后，Odwalla1221的spoken word展现出了一种肉体上的恐惧：“我的裙子里冒出了太多东西（There’s so much stuff coming out of my skirt）”Flannery Silva说道，她把每一个辅音都咬的很重，很清晰，就像是在咬牙切齿的威胁一样。这张专辑的另一个亮点是与现居费城的实验音乐人Moor Mother 合作的疯狂的“MMXXX”，在Drewchin 灵动的人声之后，Moor Mother加上了一段几乎连续不断一直在说的挑衅的verse1。当两位歌手在激烈的节拍、警笛声和玻璃破碎声中歌唱和说唱时，这两种差异巨大的人声之间的碰撞达到了这张专辑的高潮。虽然这首歌几乎没有任何旋律可言，但“MMXXX”是 Eartheater 有史以来发行的的最令人上瘾的歌曲之一。从头到尾，它的能量都非常充足，并不需要任何hook2来达到高潮。
注：1. Verse即为说唱中的“段”，一首说唱歌曲就是由好几段verse拼起来的。
2. Hook通常出现在副歌但是本身并不是副歌，原意“钩子”，是指一首歌中最能勾人的部分。
Eartheater hints at the threat femininity poses to the male world order across a number of tracks, most notably “Inhale Baby,” which features vocals from the L.A.-based experimental duo Odwalla1221. “Inhale baby pink/Exhale red,” Chloe Maratta repeats, as if urging her collaborators to alchemize their compulsive docility into fiery rage. Later, an element of body horror appears in the duo’s spoken-word contribution: “There’s so much stuff coming out of my skirt,” says Flannery Silva, stretching out her consonants as if pronouncing a threat. The album’s other feature, by the Philadelphia experimentalist Moor Mother, on the frantic “MMXXX,” complements Drewchin’s vaulting melodies with a steadily defiant verse. As the two vocalists sing and rap over aggressive beats, sirens, and sounds of breaking glass, the contrast between them produces the record’s high point. There is hardly any melody to speak of, yet “MMXXX” ranks among the most addictive song Eartheater has put to tape. It has so much energy it doesn’t need a hook.
“我反抗这种文化” Drewchin在“C.L.I.T.”中愤怒的吉他之下呼喊道，这是一首代表“好奇心解放无限真理（curiosity liberates infinite truth）”的先行曲。主导IRISIRI的是一种摆脱“音乐应听起来就应该是什么样子”的文化标准的冲动，不过Drewchin最感兴趣的似乎是在父权期望的限制之外表达女性气质。在 Eartheater 处在的蓬勃发展的音乐世界中，女性不需要为了美丽而放弃自己的声音。她们可以自由地制造骚动，发出骇人听闻的声音，咬牙切齿的对待任何愿意把他们关起来的人。
“I rejected that culture,” Drewchin wails over raging guitars on “C.L.I.T.,” an advance single whose name stands for “curiosity liberates infinite truth.” The impulse to cast off cultural standards dictating how music should sound dominates IRISIRI, which seems most interested in articulating femininity outside the constraints of patriarchal expectations. In Eartheater’s burgeoning musical world, women don’t need to fold their voices in service of beauty. They are free to make a ruckus, to sound monstrous, to gnash their teeth at anyone who would pen them in.
