Bertucci, Lea

***Acclaimed New York-based composer Lea Bertucci offers The Oracle, a striking, vocal-focused collection of music that spans six tracks of adventurous sounds steeped in mysticism and imagination, over three years in the making. Her first purely solo endeavor since 2021’s much lauded A Visible Length of Light (Cibachrome Editions), The Oracle breaks new ground within the scope of Bertucci’s singular voice as an artist.

The Oracle is an alchemy of contemporary political anxieties illuminated by surrealistic images that seep in from the unconscious. The music centers on voice, a shift from the instrumental music of previous albums. Bertucci’s creatively misuses a reel-to-to-reel tape machine to live-manipulate her voice, a process that breaks apart language to instill meaning beyond the word. The lyrics that populate The Oracle originate from what the artist calls a “stream-of-unconsciousness” method of improvisation. She continues, “fragments of words and phrases simmer within layers of voice . . . revealing and obscuring images of dreams, warped news headlines and mythological imagery.” These subliminal influences collide to create a “soothsaying for this tumultuous historical moment”.

A hushed disquiet haunts The Oracle and evokes the ancient, eternal, and quotidian all at once. In the opening track, "Oracular Chasm," a clarion call of folkloric flutes resonates in a cave in upstate New York following a rainstorm. A master of exploring the phenomena of hyper-resonant space, as in 2019’s Resonant Field (NNA Tapes) and 2020’s Acoustic Shadows (SA Recordings), Bertucci again summons the totality of sounding objects in conjunction with extraordinary acoustic conditions.

Throughout, Bertucci manipulates field recordings to place the listener somewhere deep within the sphere of imagination. She describes “a seething natural world and foreboding visions of the long arc of civilization” that are revealed through improvisational vocal polyphony layered until it forms dissonant choirs. The Oracle dares the listener to find beauty amongst the wreckage.

The backbones of these works were recorded at MESS (Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio a former military base turned artist residency at the Marin Headlands in northern California—and at home in upstate New York and New York City. Edition of 300 LPs, 100 CDs.