A Call to Arms

Album review

London's Louis Carnell has progressively drawn his Visionist project away from its beginnings in club music, using his intense, boundary-pushing albums as venues for deep personal examination. Both 2015's Safe and 2017's Value interpreted the producer's battles with anxiety and isolation, expressing what words can't describe through harsh, grinding rhythmic formations and bleak, disconcerting synth-scapes. A Call to Arms is no less challenging and cathartic than those works, but it marks a major shift in Carnell's working methods as well as his sound. Letting go of the chirpy, disembodied vocal samples of his past material, here he embraces the warmth and honesty of the naked human voice, singing lyrics for the first time on his records in addition to working with a few choice collaborators. Opener "By Design" drifts through periods of static and silence, with Ben Romans-Hopcraft contributing wayward clarinet, airy guitar, and delicate vocals. "Form" establishes more of a post-industrial art-pop sound, with caustic guitar played by Wu-Lu and a slow, snapping rhythm framing Carnell's lyrics about hunger, uncertainty, and desire, given extra poignancy by Lisa E. Harris' unbound, operatic vocals. "The Fold" is a heartbreaking duet with Circuit des Yeux's Haley Fohr, with both artists lamenting broken hope as Matthew Bourne's steady piano playing grounds the song with a sense of clarity. "Winter Sun" is a disorienting swirl of queasy vaporwave textures, Gregorian chanting, and Ben Vince's shape-shifting saxophone, clearing for Carnell's eloquent messages of hope and gratitude. While tracks such as these are the most open and transparent that Carnell has ever been with his music, there's others that are difficult and defiant, yet compelling. Japanese noise pioneer K.K. Null adds squealing feedback to the beginning of "Allowed to Dream," which gradually smoothes itself out and becomes quite peaceful and lovely by the end. The epic "Nearly God" begins with smoldering rhythmic distortion and thudding, cinderblock-heavy kick drums, which eventually drop out as the track's hallucinatory clock chimes and ghostly vocals take over. "Lie Digging" similarly approaches the gritty avant-techno of labels like Opal Tapes, with a crackling drum loop (courtesy of black midi's Morgan Simpson) pumping away under whirring, glitching machinery. A Call to Arms occupies a unique space in Visionist's catalogue, as it's a fractured, inconsistent record, yet it seems like he's baring more of his soul than ever, and it certainly marks a turning point in the direction he's taking his music.
© Paul Simpson /TiVo