Pitched-up synthetic vocal femininity traces back to Scritti Politti

Evidence

The excess of Green’s voice resides in its sweetness, a sweetness that seems unhealthy, sickly, which puts us on our guard even as it seduces us. Green’s voice is synthetic, candied, rather than authentic, wholesome. It already sounds inhuman, so that, upon first hearing rave’s pitched-up chirruping vocals, the obvious comparison was with Scritti’s androgynous cooing. All of this is anticipated on the track that I find most captivating when I listen to Cupid and Psyche now, the machine ballad, “A Little Knowledge”, in which Green duets with what sounds like a woman, but which is in fact a Fairlight-sprite, a synthetic succubus constructed from his own voice pitched up. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1188

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Fisher’s recurrent themes of the posthuman/synthetic voice and rave’s ghostly femininity, as in his writings on UK garage and 2-step.