Matchess – Sonescent (Drag City)

A restless seeker and musician, Matchess finds deep aural pathways on Sonescent, her new album of visceral meditations for Drag City

Early in 2022, Whitney Johnson (aka Matchess) began living in a barn close to Uppsala in southern Sweden. Apparently the site is next to a burial mound, with grave fields and rune stones all around. Johnson partly moved there to do three months of postdoctoral research at Uppsala University. All of which rather fits with her cultural and personal profile. Johnson studies sigils alongside sound healing and states that anything otherworldly is her jam. Moreover, she wrote a dissertation on auditory culture and fronted the potent space-rock band Verma. As a session muso she’s worked with Ryley Walker and Circuit Des Yeux among others.

All these elements coalesce at various points on her latest album Sonescent. This is music made where magic and darkness co-exist; it’s vividly spookish and leaves you ‘chilled’ in both senses of the word. It’s also a reminder of what great power music has over the human mind. Johnson’s electronic work arguably has its origins in religious composition, such is her interplay between the sacred and scientific here. She once played a release show at The International Museum of Surgical Science, but she’s also studied ethnography at La Monte Young’s Dream House in New York.

Sonescent is formed of two long tracks, “Almost Gone” and “Through the Wall”. The former opens on a piercing tape hiss, before a shuddered bass boom leads to brainwashing soundwaves. Johnson wants you to feel this music physically, for there’s no percussion needed when the synths throb and pulsate so. Beneath all this a viola flits shyly, waiting to be invited in as the piece continues its ghostly lingering. Then the viola thrusts forward, no longer rippling under the surface but darting with force over muted organ chords. Johnson layers her music gradually with flickers of acoustic instruments amid droning waves. Yet at times your speakers will vibrate to near-earthquake levels and the drones will attempt to break solid matter.

“Through the Wall” adds in different pitches and timbres, but what is being programmed and what is played for real? Sounds are both struck and unstruck. It’s hard to be certain which is which. A brief and stately barn dance is conjured on the strings, there’s a humming mantra as we enter a state of stillness, then cracklings and thrummings and hellish static. Johnson is intrigued by the occult and clearly wants to communicate with some great unknown here.

Varied artists compatible with Johnson might include Julia Kent, Klaus Schulze, Mind Over Mirrors and Christina Vantzou. Fitting albums that spring to mind are STIR by Bill MacKay and Katinka Kleijn; Compassion by Lama Lobsang Palden & Jim Becker, along with Dreams of Sleep and Wakes of Sound by Merz, Laraaji & Ismaily. All the above-mentioned express their own futurism, but like Sonescent they remind us of our ancient interplay with the natural world.

Matchess Bandcamp