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Avg: 3.0 (36 ratings)
- Date Released: April 16, 2007
- Genre: Alternative/Punk
- Style: Alternative
- Label: kranky / Iris
A world of echo that is as weird as it is pretty.
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We Say...
Honey Owens (aka Valet) waited some time to make her first solo album — a decade at the heart of Portland, OR's vibrant avant-rock community in the groups World, Nudge and Jackie-O Motherfucker. Blood Is Clean is a lovely debut, a real slow burner. It takes at least a few listens to get into it, but Valet really delivers, with fiercely original (and kind of spooky) music in the spirit of Royal Trux, Eluvium and Yoko Ono. These meditative, melted-sounding jams are layered and intricate, though simple melodic and percussive elements are at the core of each. The true standout, the title track, is a sleepy half-rocker with a motorik beat that springs to life halfway through. From the flood of whispered vocals on "Tame all the Lions" to the puddle of stretched-out sounds that accumulate all over "Sade 4 Bri," Owens' world of echo is as weird as it is pretty.
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They Say...
Blood Is Clean, Honey Owens' debut as Valet, feels more like a séance than an album. Owens described the process of making these works as more like channeling the music rather than self-consciously recording it, and it shows: her voice, guitar and electronic drones are woven together inextricably, and as she murmurs and moans, the sounds surrounding her ebb and flow match her, rising and falling like breath on the aptly named "Mystic Flood." On "Sade 4 Bri," guitar melodies ripple, reflect and undulate in endless, hypnotic patterns. Blood Is Clean is very different than Owens' work with Nudge, and resembles her contributions to Jackie-O Motherfucker only slightly -- Valet's blend of folk, drones, and indescribable noises that sound organic (even if they're anything but) borrow from Owens' other projects but sound completely unique. "April 6" begins Blood Is Clean with massed, wordless vocals, bongos and impressionistic guitar textures -- Owens strums and taps her instrument into melodic rhythms and percussive melodies that blur into each other -- while electronic sounds and other percussive elements drift in and out. The effect is incredibly natural, almost like field recordings, but as atmospheric as the album gets, it never quite fades into the background, even on the most abstract pieces like "Burmajuana," which consists of little more than whispering, wind chimes, and viscous guitar drones. Blood Is Clean's more songlike tracks are especially beautiful: Owens has an unselfconsciously sensual voice much like Bardo Pond's Isobel Sollenberger, and "Tame All the Lions" and the title track have some of the disorienting, woozy loveliness of that band's more gently psychedelic moments. The final, 13-minute epic "North" is another standout, piling layers of processed, slowly morphing vocals on top of each other so densely and lushly that they're almost tangible, suggesting glaciers slowly but surely moving and reshaping themselves. Owens' uncanny gifts for textures and for playing with space and distance in her music make Blood Is Clean a quietly accomplished album, artfully crafted without being obviously crafted. Though Owens' work is subtle, it's not so understated that it fails to make an impact on the first listen, and while active listening to the album is rewarded, there's a lot to be said for letting its serene yet unexpected sounds wash over you.
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| 01. |  |
April_6 |
8:10 |
|
| 02. | |
Blood is Clean |
4:59 |
|
| 03. | |
Burmajuana |
3:37 |
|
| 04. | |
Tame all the Lions |
4:45 |
|
| 05. | |
Mystic Flood |
4:05 |
|
| 06. | |
My Volcano |
7:12 |
|
| 07. | |
Sade 4 Bri |
6:13 |
|
| 08. | |
North |
13:07 |
|
08 Total Tracks, 52:08 Total Length
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