I noticed some trends at the Pitchfork festival this year, one in particular that a lot of the bands we saw were doing really interesting, progressive things with rhythm, sometimes ditching it completely. Animal Collective were using jarring loops, Deerhunter let out roaring washes of sound, and Julianna Barwick fed her voice through loops and reverbed the living shit out of them to make some beautiful ear candy. I downloaded this one earlier in the year and I thought it was alright, but since the beginning of the Summer I have been playing it nonstop. Barwick essentially throws rhythm out the window, or at least slows it down to a snails pace and doesn't signify it with any sort of beat. All we hear is her voice with a few occasional touchups or accompaniments. The end product sounds choral, even spiritual. When you break it down, the album's construction is very simple, but it sounds like nothing else I've heard. Basically what she is doing is inserting sounds into space and letting them breath and bounce off of one another. Very beautiful stuff. The cover pretty much says it all.
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