Your Voice is Not Enough stands as a heartfelt tribute to Low, a project born out of a conversation with Planning For Burial’s Thom Wasluck and The Flenser. Inspired by the nuanced beauty of Low’s discography, what began as a discussion on ranking favorite albums blossomed into a collaborative effort that brought together our close-knit group of Flenser artists and friends. Regrettably, the compilation took shape before the tragic passing of Mimi Parker, and in honoring her legacy, we dedicate this album to her memory, celebrating the profound impact she left on the music world.
The tribute features eight cover songs by Flenser artists and friends, including Cremation Lily, Holy Water, Midwife and Amulets, Allison Lorenzen, Kathryn Mohr, Planning for Burial, Have A Nice Life, and Drowse featuring Lula Asplund, and — the latter of which has premiered today.
Drowse’s Kyle Bates comments, “Low’s music has had a profound effect on me during many stages of my life. Their final two records still sound decades ahead of our time and have been direct influences on my recent work as Drowse. I first heard Low through their mini-album, Songs for a Dead Pilot, which I picked up as a teenager due to its striking cover art. The music within reflects that desolate cover image, creating a cold atmosphere that I have been chasing ever since. ‘Hey Chicago’ is this short piece of beauty that comes at the end of the album as a balm for the preceding thirty three minutes of sparse, sustained darkness. I thought it fitting to cover the song with Lula Asplund, a Chicago-based sound artist who I play in a duo with. Lula and I saw Low play in Chicago in early 2022, their final year as a band, and it was a performance I will never forget; rest in peace Mimi Parker, you live on in our memories.”
Lula Asplund continues, “I was excited when Kyle asked me to contribute to this cover because I grew up listening to Low. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen was Low live in Chicago. I was very sad and shocked to hear of Mimi Parker’s passing—weird to realize that that concert in Chicago was the only time I’d ever hear those gorgeous voices together in a room.”
Additionally, today Drowse releases Overcasts which contains four short stories and an essay written by Bates between 2019 and 2023. The stories trace the boundary between solitude and self-isolation. Reclusive, occasionally semi-autobiographical characters wander through movie theaters, lakesides, churches, and unfamiliar cities. They drift in substances, thoughts of family and death, and reflections on artists such as Low, Tsai Ming-liang, Max Neuhaus, Louise Glück, and more. These ruminations are frequently punctured by sublimely eerie events.
The essay, initially written as a graduate thesis while Bates studied at the renowned Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College, continues the theme of being alone. It addresses works by experimental electronic composers Pauline Oliveros, Maryanne Amacher, and Éliane Radigue, examining the various forms of memory at play in self-recording. While often bleak, together these writings reveal an always curious experience of the world through slippery contours of self.
Overcasts includes the stories “Cloud Light Over Obsidian” and “Second Self” that were originally only available with limited editions of the Drowse records Wane into It and Light Mirror.
Bates says, “I have been quietly writing the entire time I’ve been working with sound, finding ways to incorporate it into my more public work such as slipping short stories into Drowse LPs and blending narrative text into my installations and performances. Writing prose often feels more vulnerable than writing songs because I’m less able to hide behind layers of abstraction–anyone who can read the language will read a sentence, assume they understand it, and assign meaning to it more freely than they would to a wall of distorted synthesizers. I feel proud to finally be collecting some of my writings in one place and making them publicly available. The essay in Overcasts will appeal to anyone interested in memory, experimental music, and/or self-recording, and the stories are dispatches from the same impressionistic world that I’ve been building through sound for all of these years.”
Order Overcasts here and look for more songs from Your Voice Is Not Enough to arrive soon, with the full compilation release incoming in 2024.
