D i g i t a l B e a c h
Experimental Housewife live A/V with Rose Cherami @ In Too Deep, Oakland, 2018
True Indigo 2020
Distorted, decayed, and dismayed are the best descriptions of D i g i t a l B e a c h, Experimental Housewife's first full-length since her premiere full-length Place Writer on Jacktone in 2016. The techno-leaning experimental dance LP tells the story of a wish to return to a moment that at first seemed insignificant but later became painfully finite: a day in 2016 when the artist walked casually down the beach with a friend who soon after passed away. This album is a grieving work; it is a love letter and cry of deep sadness. It hits the ears with the same speed and weight of oceanside waves, representing the artist’s desire to relive that eminent day so that she may spend time with her friend again and save that friend from harm. A virtual simulation and digital beach would provide the impossible, something that anyone struck by grief desperately needs: to revisit and rewrite those final moments. To achieve such a task, the fabric of time and space must be stretched out, reprocessed, and mitigated.
With graphic design and signal processing by True Indigo, arts and performance collective/label based in the western avenues of San Francisco, the album has been allowed to reach a fuller capacity as a conversation between dimensions and surpass its form as an electronic music LP. Indeed, True Indigo did their part by executing the “blending of moving parts”.
The story of a hurting ecosystem is also amid the work, with the swelling wildfire heat of “E u r e k a” (complete with a sample of Octavia Butler predicting that the world would be on fire by the 2020s), thrashing elements in “A q u a m a r i n e” and seaside storminess in “S c r i m s a v e r” (with Mr. Rogers speaking on how to revive a dead goldfish). The sadness that appears throughout the work is poignantly capstoned in the last three songs, each of which sound off with varying intensity, lamentation, discomfort and, eventually, acceptance. The closing track “A s k T h e C y p r e s s W h y” features a poem by Los Angeles-based writer Josey Rose, whose words were written for the same friend commemorated in and by this album.
Track list:
A1. D i r e c t O c e a n
A2. E u r e k a
A3. S c r i m s a v e r
A4. W a s h
B1. A q u a m a r i n e
B2. U p d a t e R i p C u r r e n t
B3. W e S h o u l d ‘ v e S a i d G o o d b y e
B4. A s k T h e C y p r e s s W h y (f e a t. J o s e y R o s e)