Isabelle “Izzy” Thorn creates some very experimental, noisy and artful pop music and she does it a lot: in the last four years, she released seven longer albums and one of them, Rinzen from 2018 was one of the shiniest gems on my blog that year. This time, the British artist comes back with perhaps the most nuanced and complex album called Pluperfect Mind.
Her music is strongly affected by her avant-garde approach to music. Thorn uses difficult melodies sown up from various matters into a chaotic and very atmospheric whole glued together by her unbelievably airy but poignant voice. There's next to everything in her music: electronic subtlety, harsh noise, instrumental randomness, choir appearances and, the most important part, mystery and uniqueness of its high-art theatrical style. It's not one to have fun to or to pick up melodies from; it's more like sounds for lonely and careful admiration. It's not music, it's "a beautiful and singular oddity which exists in the liminal space between dreamworlds and a blurry, watercoloured version of reality".
This is not an easy music but this was not meant to be either. It's very fitting as it talks about things that are not easy either. The main theme of the album is isolation, a topic so very well known right now, but it's also about Thorn's experience with being a trans-gender person. It is painful and poignant and lines like the one from Ubi Sunt (yawning ocean/ of days adrift and calm/ catatonic, watching sundown/ tremble against the wall/ washed out and faint/ i wait for nightfall) describe the lonely times of depression so accurately and poetically at the same time. This album's release is one of the biggest events this year.
Pluperfect Mind costs 10 USD.
Check: Asleep in Wildland Fire
Country: UK
Genre: avant-garde pop
Label: NNA Tapes
