Why wouldn't you take Mira Calix seriously? Granted, her work generally sees favorable reviews, but I've seen a lot of offhand comments from IDM kids who dismiss her because she used to work as press secretary for Warp. It's clear even from her small discography as DJ and composer that Chantal Passamonte isn't trying to be the female Aphex Twin, regardless of how many have made that comparison. Richard James, Mike Paradinas & Co. camp out in what Rephlex has come to call the "braindance" tradition-- their brand of cerebral mindfuckery. Passamonte's 2000 release One on One expressed an almost obsessive attention to sonic contiguity, the result being a hypersensual world of sound that flowed in its own mysterious patterns. Her use of soft, whispered vocals also added a level of intimacy not often found with the lads mentioned above.
Prickle followed as an EP in May of 2001. If the review is a bit late, please forgive; I've been lost in the 19-minute opening track. It's never given the name "Prickle," but rather is subdivided into four suites. The first, "Miliaria," is named appropriately, in that "mili-" and "-ia" both suggest unquantifiable vastness. Static flutters out of your headphones and other phenomena mill about in the periphery. A sense of scale develops as a dense hiss rises above like a synthetic stormcloud. Brief, melancholy piano phrases give form to the mix, followed by thumping beats that remind of Posthuman's debut. Passamonte's wispy singing tempers the cold swells of the keyboard, echoing beautifully.
After roughly eight minutes that movement fades, and the human touch is subsumed into alien environs populated by glitchy chirps and analogue squirts. Right around this point I lose what little footing I had. Thudding percussion reverberates under avian quibbling, threatening to turn my walk home into a safari. I'm saved by biomechanical crackling, an oblique machine-rhythm of some sort that brings me back from the veldt. The album sleeve features childlike sketches of flora and fauna set amongst an expansive plain. Together with the music, it's a fitting evocation of Mira Calix' South African homeland by way of London's sound. If you can't be at home, might as well take a little world with you.
The second and final track is a remix of One on One's "Skin with Me," courtesy of Andrea Parker. As might be imagined, it's got an electro vibe, framed by that light tchak hit on the fourth beat and fleshed out by anthemic synth vamps. Parker loops a fragment of Passamonte's voice for the main melodic line, very similar in result to Moby's retooling of the Smashing Pumpkins' "1979," in which he isolated that wibbling "tweeee" effect and slowed it to an unsettling speed, building up his own song around the sample. It's the kind of piece that's danceable but difficult to imagine on a dancefloor; you'd have more luck with it as a choreograph routine for that diva from The Fifth Element. The remix works as a nice coda for Passamonte's opus-in-microcosm.
