Vinyl LP
Could we be on the cusp of a minor freak-folk boom? Probably not, but there are now sudden signs of life in a scene that has somehow long been maligned for its overly earnest eccentricity. Joanna Newsom is doing a festival, then a cemetery gig, and I recently marveled as fans at Big Ears, in the Appalachian foothills, clutched Faun Fables merch like sacred talismans. Brilliant new records by Hannah Frances and Joseph Allred fit the wonderfully wayward path, as do forthcoming gems by standbys Myriam Gendron and Six Organs of Admittance. James Blackshaw appears to be back, too. Could it be nostalgia, as evidenced by a recent Stereogum list as that moment’s various apogees near the 20-year mark, or is it that we again seem over the edge of a geopolitical precipice when the best thing to do may be to rip up the standards and start a new fire?
It may seem strange to invoke 9T Antiope in this scenario. The duo of singer and lyricist Sara Bigdeli Shamloo and producer and string player Nima Aghiani are, after all, from Tehran and based in Paris, not some Southern holler or Northern burg. And over the last seven years, Shamloo has spun elliptical poetry over Aghiani’s scorched electronics, like some vertiginous opera singer stuck in a musical hall of mirrors. But on the entrancing and haunting Horror Vacui, the pair pulls away from its longform barrages and offers nine uncanny songs, with Aghiani’s processed strings providing an unexpected scaffolding for Shamloo’s surreal composite of soul, plainsong, and Persian ululation. Horror Vacui feels, in many ways, like that bygone scene reawakening to incorporate vital new influences—dark electronica, hip-hop, folk forms that aren’t descended from Europe. What’s more, it’s a record that’s hard to slip once you hear it, hanging around like some relentless shadow.
Horror Vacui is a concept album that wonders aloud what kind of memory a physical space can hold. Centered around a catawampus house atop some dimly lit hill, the record is a hall of phantoms, suspicions, and mysteries, all maintained by a slim cast of caretakers called “The Crimson Crew.” This plot only becomes clear with the centerpiece title track, but its ominous implications linger throughout the record’s intentionally stale air. “Too long, too dark, this night,” Shamloo intones during “Mount 22,” nodding to Blind Willie Johnson as echoes of her own voice chase her. “Reeks of noise/ Reeks of void,” she sings near the end of “Run for the Hills,” her pace slow, as if sluggish from fighting for air with the growling violin beneath her. This is a record about reckoning with what lurks in unseen corners, about dealing with a reality that we can suspect but that we cannot clearly see.
What’s surprising, then, is how very light and tuneful Horror Vacui sounds, especially considering 9T Antiope’s astringent past. The opener, “Shapeshift,” is a rhythmic game between Shamloo and Aghiani, his pizzicato strings and her half-whispered croon combining to create an instantly catchy number that Jolie Holland might hum. Much the same holds for closer “Midnight Sun,” where her voice bounces between bits of meticulously arranged strings like a ping-pong ball, a dance transformed into a prismatic track.
Were songs this strong and conceits this intriguing always lurking within 9T Antiope’s past, like a memory hidden inside an empty house? Maybe, but it barely matters: Horror Vacui exists somewhere between dream and nightmare, mingling noise and melody in songs that, like specters, shift shape the moment you think you understand them. They feel like freak-folk, creaking into right now.
