A Closer Listen
While preparing to release her new album, Time is a Succession of Such Shapes (August 6), Loula Yorke has provided fans with a delicious first taste. The Book of Commonplace is as personal as they come: a mixtape cassette, as if the artist has recorded it specifically for the recipient, plus if one is so fortunate to acquire it, a mini-zine, Polaroid photos and hand-pressed flowers. And this isn’t just any mixtape, a collection of musical moments, but also a collection of intimate moments caught in passing: snippets of TV and radio talk, kitty contentment, twittering birds, and our favorite, “jam on toast.” As it captures the sounds of everyday life, the mix recalls Ai Yamamoto’s Pan De Sonic – Iso, the obvious difference being that Yamamoto was forced to appreciate such sounds while stuck at home during the pandemic, and Yorke is free to follow her joy.
The project began in April 2024, when Yorke set out to chronicle her daily life in aural fashion, recording a mixtape every month (available by subscription). The public releases represent the distillation of the process. The fun is in hearing the little details, which serve as metaphors for appreciating the blessings of daily life. At the start of Side A, the cat purrs as the birds sing; we suspect the cat is dreaming of said birds, feeling deep contentment. It’s not clear whether the modular synth is the score for the dream, or the field recordings are the score for the modular synth; the sounds are pleasantly conflated. Should one listen with windows open, one may experience a Sensurround effect. The world serenades Yorke; Yorke serenades the world.
As recorded voices enter, one begins to recall The Orb, especially as Yorke’s synthesizers are dipped in nostalgia. “This is a story about a mouse,” a narrator announces, leaving us wanting more; and if the cat were to hear this, the cat might be even more intent on the heart of the narrative. When a pulse enters, a line is drawn to the classic mix CDs of the 90s and 00s. Had Yorke been recording back then, she might have found her music on a shrink-wrapped CD affixed to a copy of Mixmag by a dollop of rubber cement.
Yorke sings or burbles while placing ice cubes in a glass; she turns on the telly, but watches briefly. Outside, rain begins to fall, but the birds continue to sing; or are they on the TV? One hears Yorke flitting between stations, then abandoning the telly for more entertaining cassettes. All the while, she continues to create music, reflecting her impressions of the universe, even the universe within her flat. The celebration of the 19th minute may be a birthday or the new year; one hopes that it is live. There are pots and pans and snippets of song; someone is having fun, but this section sounds wistful as its genesis is unclear. When everyone leaves (or the sound is turned off), Yorke is left to her music, producing a darker, dronelike segment. The tonal contrast deepens the appreciation of the whole.
Side B begins in fun fashion: “those tusks must be almost two feet long!” Yorke slows and speeds the sample. “It’s a funny noise to make when you’re wide awake!” A happy bird might dream of a sleeping cat, as a sleeping cat might dream of a nearby bird, but now everyone is awake and the music is happy again. And then a sudden discovery, the spoken near-title of the CD, “time is just a succession of shapes.” Hearing these words on this tape, one starts to think of time differently, the shapes as sounds, the eternal represented by recurring sources such as weather and birds and the temporal by televisions and toasters. The smoothing ingredient – the jam on the toast – is Yorke’s music. Sonic experiences are translated into moods, moods into music, music into new sounds that in turn affect the environments in which they are played.
The center of Side B turns classically ambient, nearly orchestral. The juxtaposition of strings and credit prompts gives way to a street scene: a conversation followed by a local brass player (or an external sound source), buzzing bees and a child’s announcement. The “musical interlude” offers an impression of leaving one’s house, encountering all manner of sonic surprises; and in response, onomatopoeia. Soon listeners are back on familiar ground, the modular synth confident and calm, the mood changed once again, as it is wont to do over the course of a year. Someone is vacuuming the year away, but the aural detritus remains: crumbs and glitter and moments and notes that in this mix become a scrapbook of sound. Church bells ring; the old has gone, the new is come, the commonplace remains. (Richard Allen)
Thu Jun 12 00:01:38 GMT 2025