NORENT042: Rose Actor-Engel "Mourner's Kaddish" CD

Noise so often focuses on anger and disgust while dealing with the pain of life. There’s a tendency to remain in the kinetic, frantic experience. It’s quick moving and spastic or slow and pummeling. But pain, confusion and sadness take on so many forms. The immobility of fear, the stillness of sadness, the ever present weight of grief and the uncertainty of momentary relief. Rose Actor-Engel’s work whether under Apologist or her own name occupy this space of a more total experience. As opposed to focusing on one aspect it’s immersive and expansive in the stories it tells. There’s moments of great beauty and moments of true destruction and pain all arranged with an intricate sense of purpose and surprise. Mourner’s Kaddish achieves this seamlessly using synthesizer and tape loops to a mysterious intent. To call it simply noise or ambient would be reductive, it’s a flawless and inspired mapping of feeling. You aren’t led through it, you’re invited within it.
-Erik Brown