Little Axe songs are accreted palimpsests rather than authored works

Evidence

Songs are texturally-dense palimpsests, accreted rather than authored. McDonald’s own vocals, by turns doleful, quietly enraged and affirmatory, are often doubled as well as dubbed. They and the modern instrumentation repeatedly sink into grainy sepia and misty trails of reverb, falling into a dyschronic contemporeanity with the crackly samples. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 303

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the album as assembly rather than authorship, blurring sampling versus songwriting distinctions.
• XREF: connects to: Musical origins themselves harbor ghosts, undoing authenticity claims — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 302; Dub blues evokes phantom-slave continuities rather than merely nostalgic sound — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 297