Rita Revell - Folded Volume 33 CD

NM presents a new work from Naarm/Melbourne producer Rita Revell, 'Folded Volume 33'. Her flawless, uncategorisable self-release ‘Depozit’ (2022) and subsequent live shows led us to virtually demand more material from this largely mysterious, protean sound assembler.

'Folded Volume 33' is an evocative globe of electronic sound collage liturgies, a heaving topography vacillating with warm waves of fondness and cracked caves of mourning. Less abrasive or rhythmic than earlier work (see past releases on This Thing and Happy Endin'), hallowed images of loss and devotion are painted with arcane lashes of treated guitars and wind instruments, engraved amongst an evocative travelogue of tone collage. 'In Vit' undulates gently with rolls of bass and drifting pad drones, the soft tenderness of 'Persus' and 'Pretty Ugly' melt icecaps with their unabashed warmth - plaintive chordal structures and feathery guitar plucks, holding the chatter of any horror well off in the distance. Sorrow and stress do loom and flood routinely though - an acute moment of techno urgency on 'Baba', the savage industrial clatter of 'White Tail Brain', 'Rat In The Wall's discombobulated warping and grasping for the reins once more.

The track titles seem wistfully loaded with backstories we'll never know ('Off You Go', 'St Vins Cowboy', 'Four Years'), mirroring extracts of yearning, hope and deliverance - feelings akin to finding a single faded tarot card or rediscovering a sound or song you'd taped as a child. Shrouded in deeply coded personal significance and assembled with stern care and strength, 'Folded Volume 33' is but a glimpse of an existence Revell chooses to share.

Cover art and concept by Bradley Pinkerton