Digitally fragmented vocals can express ache more intensely than fully-formed singing

Evidence

Listening back to Blake’s records in chronological sequence is like hearing a ghost gradually assume material form; or it’s like hearing the song form (re)coalescing out of digital ether. A track such as “I Only Know (What I Know Now)” from the Klavierwerke EP is gorgeously insubstantial — it’s the merest ache, Blake’s voice a series of sighs and unintelligible pitch-shifted hooks, the production mottled and waterlogged, the arrangement intricate and fragile, conspicuously inorganic in the way that it makes no attempt to smooth out the elements of the montage. The voice is a smattering of traces and tics, a spectral special effect scattered across the mix. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1301

Categorization

• XREF: Fisher’s broader project on hauntology, sonic memory and lost futures — resonates with his writing on Burial and the spectral in pop.