Powell
Spoken by the Other - EP
Album - Electronic, Music
Electronic mischief-maker Powell and famed fine-art photographer Wolfgang Tillmans blaze unexpected trails on their debut recording together. Unlike the smirking post-punk techno of Powell’s solo work, the EP swims in ominous, buzzing drones, which reach their peak with the glassy echoes of “Speak Out.” Tillmans’ halting vocals are reminiscent of the synth-pop project he abandoned in the ’80s and resumed in 2016 (Frank Ocean famously included one of these songs on Endless), but the production has been taken in radically new directions, both burnished (the ambient “Feel the Night”) and battered (the haunting “Speak Out”). The closing “445” is Powell’s atmospheric remix of a phone recording Tillmans made while drumming on the dishes at a friend’s dinner party—an audio snapshot as striking as the photographer’s own diaristic images.
Spoken by the Other - EP
Powell
Electronic mischief-maker Powell and famed fine-art photographer Wolfgang Tillmans blaze unexpected trails on their debut recording together. Unlike the smirking post-punk techno of Powell’s solo work, the EP swims in ominous, buzzing drones, which reach their peak with the glassy echoes of “Speak Out.” Tillmans’ halting vocals are reminiscent of the synth-pop project he abandoned in the ’80s and resumed in 2016 (Frank Ocean famously included one of these songs on Endless), but the production has been taken in radically new directions, both burnished (the ambient “Feel the Night”) and battered (the haunting “Speak Out”). The closing “445” is Powell’s atmospheric remix of a phone recording Tillmans made while drumming on the dishes at a friend’s dinner party—an audio snapshot as striking as the photographer’s own diaristic images.
