A Closer Listen
Montréal’s Joni Void has created a universe in which time collapses in on itself. Every Life Is A Light begins in mid-loop, an indication of its nature. The album is a treasure trove of tapes and effects, crate digging and mind digging. The opening “Everyday – A Sequel” – hearkens back to 2023’s Everyday Is The Song, while the cover art references that of 2018’s A Prayer (For Loved Ones). Loops and samples abound, while the interior art is rife with Polaroid pictures. When the first track ends in a plastic click, one remembers the famous question of an earlier era, “Is it live, or is it Memorex?” What is live is almost an afterthought.
N NAU is singing on “Du Parc,” but trolley bells are also ringing, pedestrians are speaking, an emergency vehicle is passing by. Samples echo; words dissolve in dub. Tracks don’t end where one expects them to; sometimes they hang on like Hospice patients, while other times their lives are clipped short. Few tracks include straightforward vocals, while those that do are offset by shifting undercurrents. Muffin the Cat (sadly deceased) meows all over the middle tracks, as if to insist, “I’m still here!” The past is ever with us, in myriad forms.
The title Every Life Is A Light refers partially to Muffin, partially to the listener, partially to the sea of humanity. Joni Void isn’t as much resurrecting the past as keeping it spinning. References to trip-hop abound, a genre that like vinyl was seemingly on its last legs before turning around. The first two-thirds of”In-Between Places” shares the tempo and timbre of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop.” Even the most straightforward piece, “Story Board,” channels the spirit of De La Soul and includes a reference to 1987.
The guests are many – Haco, Ytamo, Pink Navel, Sook-Yin-Lee. But the samples are even more numerous. As the words “death is not the end” are whispered in the track of the same name, one muses on the nature of what endures: sound, photograph, memory. Who will win the tug of war between the past and present, the then and the now? (Richard Allen)
Fri Mar 07 00:01:54 GMT 2025