Riz Maslen has claimed that she doesn't mind being asked in every interview what it's like to be a Female Artist in Electronic Music, but I'm not convinced. Maslen, with the support of a new label, continues to distance herself from the image impressed upon her as the resident woman at Ninja Tune, and on her fourth album as Neotropic, she makes a concerted effort to tear down cumbersome and arbitrary gender and genre barriers that potentially obstruct her growth as an artist.
White Rabbits is a sprawling and personal work that further develops Maslen's advances in electronic-influenced acoustic experimentation, until now best evidenced on her previous release, 2001's La Prochaine Fois. The album is also one in which Maslen continues her refusal to be conscious of gender in her work. She exhibits an active rejection of her assumed "responsibility" as a marginalized female voice in electronic music by remaining uncompromisingly gender-neutral; gender, for her, is essentially a non-issue. On non-instrumental tracks, her lyrical statements are willfully obscure, and the recurring lyrical themes are separation and release from a stifling relationship, which pretty well sums up her perception of the "femininity" in her own music. Maslen, now as always, wants nothing to do with image pigeonholing, and on White Rabbits she takes another crucial step toward total liberation as an unclassifiable musician and composer.
What's most interesting about this statement of liberation is its construction. Maslen's composition model initially embraces an almost optimistic openness, but grows increasingly paranoid over the course of the album. This regression toward containment results in a type of inverse catharsis. Opener "New Cross" is a leisurely, bittersweet piece that melds faint electronic flourishes and muted distortion with relaxed live drum accompaniment and a soothing guitar melody. "Inch Inch" infuses a gentle piano line with clipped bursts of stuttering noise, but remains grounded in acoustic orchestration until the melody crawls to a halt. The predominantly acoustic façade begins to crack in "Magpies", a nervous, vaguely trip-hop instrumental, and shatters completely on the subsequent track, "Odity Round-a-Heights", which is built upon creepy ambient atmospherics and what sounds like a pirated recording of a German submarine radio played backward.
The systematic introversion continues-- dissonant strings, eerie harmonica and flute lines, and foreboding glockenspiel melodies transform the role of acoustic instruments in the album from a source of grounding and comfort to part of the disquieting symphony. Finally, the increasingly claustrophobic environment implodes entirely on closing track "If We Were Trees", a stark piano-driven piece that concludes the album with uneasy resignation. Maslen, her voice tired and ambivalent, sings, "Isn't it time we called it a day?"
Despite many hints of potential evolutionary strands Neotropic might choose to follow in the future (including a bonus track, which reveals the ensemble's adeptness at collaborative, free-form post-rock exploration), it is possible that the level of discourse on Riz Maslen's musical career will never completely move away from a narrow discussion of gender. But it is comforting to know that Maslen is unburdened by her "place" in electronic music. White Rabbits showcases an artist at the top of her form, remaking her image on her own terms, and refusing to allow her music to be affected by anything other than the limitations of her own creativity.
