Island (LP)

The new collaborative album from Ana da Silva (of The Raincoats) and Japanese electronic musician Phew. A bracing odyssey in industrial noise, Island is full of absorbing textures, tactile beats, and a masterfully dynamic compositional style. Each cavernous track feels like a conversation, and out of the ominous dark comes a generative hope. Ana and Phew contribute pointillist bits of spoken word in each other's native tongues of Portuguese and Japanese, reflecting on isolation, friendship, and nature. The quotidian is made profound. A gripping mood is set by the shared stoicism and subtle playfulness of these two cult punk icons. Each song was collectively composed by both Ana and Phew, who exchanged files via email. At times, Island evokes the sinister throb of Phew's recent Light Sleep album (which in turn recalls Suicide). Island's logic is one of wise minimalism. There is a feeling of discovery that will be familiar to Raincoats fans-a sense of poetry and inquisitiveness, of intuition and invention, of new languages taking shape