By Jonty Watt
Star Quality: Speculations for Guitar and Voice is a new release by genre-defying label Discus Music, featuring compositions by guitarist Keir Cooper and vocalist Eleanor Westbrook. The album’s title suggests a stripped-back, restrained approach to ensemble, but that is not what we get: bleeps and squawks and distorted wails punctuate an electronic mélange as hard to describe as I’m sure it was to compose.
From the opening track, ‘Willow Tree – A Dialogue’, it is clear that we should leave our expectations at the door. A traditional English song is reimagined for two vocalists: one Westbrook herself, delivering a sometimes beautiful, sometimes mysterious, sometimes vulgar rendition of the melody; the other a computer-generated text-to-speech voice. This unusual duet is accompanied by erratically consonant electric guitars, and the result of all this is predictably disorienting and disembodied-nursery-rhyme-at-an-abandoned-playground-ish in its creep factor.
After this opening gambit, Cooper and Westbrook leave words behind. Instead, Westbrook’s voice is the raw sonic material that Cooper cuts up and manipulates as he pleases. As the liner notes inform us, Star Quality sets out to be ‘sonically intriguing’, and on this front it is very successful. There is a Zappa-like striving for sonic weirdness which certainly will not be to everyone’s taste – but there are moments of ingenuity, like the frenetic speed-up that closes ‘Art Of Oblivion’.
Star Quality: Speculations for guitar and voice is as much about the process of its composition as it is about the finished product. There is a consistent improvisational quality, which undoubtedly stems from the fact that the vocals were originally improvised by Westbrook, and only later edited into compositions by Cooper. Despite their protracted and rigorous gestation, Cooper manages to make his arrangements sound spontaneous, which gives them an exciting liveness – a nice antidote to the hyper-detailed compositional styles that dominate much avant music. Some of the more clearly structured tracks are more musically compelling (‘Modern Translation’, ‘The time I gave up on stage’); but these balance nicely with the freer form of tracks like ‘Bordering The Afterworld’ and ‘Love And Comfort (Baby)’.
Star Quality: Speculations for guitar and voice’s subtitle raises a question: what exactly is being speculated here? Aurally, the relentless barrage of sounds makes the music feel manifestly present, resolutely in the here-and-now, demanding that you pay attention. But perhaps Star Quality is speculative in the sense that there is an implied futurity – the improvisatory freedom of the compositions suggests that they are still in development, a development which will never be complete. We are not supposed to hear this album as finished: instead, Cooper and Westbrook are in the process of reimagining and reshaping the traditions within which they operate. 
To buy the album, click here.
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