Review Summary: Life breath
Aura has no real need for a life in words, yet it shall get one because I want you to know it exists. In from the top: Hatis Noit is a self-taught vocalist with such projects as the avant-garde metal band Mutyumu and the art pop group Magdala under her belt. Her solo output is made up almost entirely of mesmerising vocal layerings, sans any accompaniment., and her debut full-length with Erased Tapes
Aura takes this reinvention of a capella one step further, boasting a rich range of traditional styles that encompasses everything from Gagaku to Gregorian chants. There’s an ongoing sense of familiar styles, spaces and impulses presented in an alien form; as Hatis Noit puts it,
Words cannot describe everything we feel [….] Music is a language that can translate that sensation, feeling, the memory of love.
For the most part, these tracks do suggest a language of the ineffable, both in that they are commanding and expressive, and that the
sound at play, though structurally simple in their lattice of vocal loops, is abstract enough to eschew any of the hack critic’s commonplace ways of transmuting music into language. It’s consequently unhelpful to view
Aura through rhetorical truisms (
it’s uncanny how well “Thor” captures its eponym’s might and grandeur!) - these are pieces best experienced having forgotten every word you’ve ever read about them - and loudly! They are not your background world music; they are the work of a powerful voice and demand high volume, open space, and your full attention as such. Listen to
Aura on good speakers wherever it can fill a room.
That sets us straight on how best to experience this record, but it’s still no easy matter to evaluate it. The title, which refers to Walter Benjamin’s estimation of art being strongest in one-off performance (aka experienced live), offers one critical lens: to what degree do these pieces recapture a similar strength of presence? At points, sublimely well: “Angelus Novus” is a stunning track, complimenting arguably the album’s most austere arrangement with full focus on its most breathtaking vocal line; Hatis Noit fills that spotlight with an absolutely magnetic performance. Opener “Aura” comes at the other end of the spectrum, a lush wilderness teeming with the kinds of vocal contortions and droning layers that will delight fans of, say, Julia Holter’s
Aviary or Pan Daijing’s
Tissues - it’s an appropriately bold start, so saturated with rich details that you’ll struggle not to find anything ear-catching in there. On the other hand, I found my attention waning somewhat during the more repetitive chant-based cuts, “Thor” and “Jomon” in particular. These, I suspect, would all benefit considerably from a live setting.
“Inori” (
Prayer) is the only piece that demands a more explicated form of engagement, due largely to the framing provided by its supplementary field recording, taken from Fukushima Daiichi power plant (the epicentre of Japan’s 2011 nuclear disaster). Hatis Noit’s opening vocal is the most fragile on the album, a faltering, lullaby-esque melody equal parts haunted or haunting, yet she gradually climbs to a full-on operatic ululation. The growing strength of her voice is matched with a range of auxiliary layers that seep into the mix like a flood of hope and warmth that lands somewhere very close to actively heartbreaking. It’s the easiest moment to pinpoint emotionally, but by no means the only one; with a little patience, each of these tracks has something of its own to hone in on in this way. In contrast to Hatis Noit’s 2014 debut
Universal Quiet, a fascinatingly oblique piece of music,
Aura pronounces the spirit of each piece very clearly, which is cause for gratitude; there’s enough weight to these eight intricate articulations of the ineffable that each offers a distinct glimpse at something ordinarily invisible and ultimately quite precious.
