Eartheater - Metalepsis (2015)

As the frontwoman of the ecstatic avant-psych ensemble Guardian Alien, Alexandra Drewchin dives into extended improvisations in pursuit of the fearless release of emotions and sounds beyond the capacity of premeditation. On her debut solo full-length Metalepsis, Eartheater traces the opposite trajectory: the deliberate distillation of voice, synths, guitar, and electronic production techniques into short-form compositions teeming with crystalline details.

The forces of nature and technology, perhaps enemies in a dimmer era, now approach some form of benevolent symbiosis, latching onto each other as the respective head and tail of a wire-veined Ouroboros. For the duration of Metalepsis, Eartheater works in tandem with her machines. Her hands grip steel, plastic, and nickel. Her guitar work leads her compositions through alternating passages of consonance and tonal abstraction, conveying the simulacrum of a singer-songwriter project while actively subverting that paradigm in the context of her dense electronic arrangements. Her voice shifts seamlessly between angelic lead melodies, whispered mantras, and streams of frenetic syllables as she sounds out over a choir of klaxons of her own devising. “Homonyms” blossoms in a rush of keening vocal figures and intertwined self-harmonizations laid over a lattice of clean-toned electric guitar and bubbling percussion. “Put A Head in a Head” slithers through woozy arpeggios and clouds of reverb as Drewchin’s sing-song chants pile together into a mosaic of contained chaos. “Space is the place where we come from,” she intones on album closer “Infinity” as layers of electronics peel back to expose her bare voice’s interplay with isolated guitar and synth lines.

Possessed of a free-associative structure spiked with experimentations with the drone, ambient, and noise traditions, Metalepsis unfolds as a singular curatorial effort with Drewchin’s voice and guitar as its gleaming focal points. “Youniverse” plays out as an exercise in jump-cut composition that careens between metallic guitar riffs, vocal interludes, and a transplanted verse of Slavic-language rap. The monolithic “Orbit” stretches over 10 minutes of resonant synth swells and distorted percussion as Drewchin and guest MrDougDoug (Hausu Mountain co-founder Doug Kaplan) pour out an intensifying murk of cyborg psychedelia. Metalepsis presents Drewchin’s personal evolution as a musical process at once tethered to advancing technologies and to the flashes of humanity that escape between the circuits.