Drawing Voices is easily one the most experimental and groundbreaking projects that I have come across in all my years of listening to and reviewing music. Mastermind Craig Dongoski with help of Aaron Turner of Isis/House of Low Culture has taken the art of drawing and writing and transformed it into an auditory experience. The two as Drawing Voices have taken various sounds of writings and drawings and experimented with them through a variety of electronic effects and processings (in addition to adding outside instrumentation) to form the most bizarre record I've heard since Mike Patton's Adult Themes for Voice.
Drawing Voices begins with "Being Born Broken," a track that sounds more like a spaceship powering up than it does like anything else. Fortunately this track is brief and quickly passes. The samplings of drawings are a slightly more noticeable on "Mask," though they are accompanied by a variety of different sounds. There are soft snyth/keys that almost sound like angelic bells humming. As well, there are swirling noises, which could be drawings that have been processed through some kind of sampler. "Scattered Shavings" is a lot like the preceding track - hints of the drawing and sketching sounds, but a lot of different effects are placed throughout the song. There are some really cool guitars used as well, smashed together it all reminds me of something out of X-Files.
"The Shrine of Wreckless Illumination" is a ten-minute track with a bit more substance to it. The various digital effects and noise layers provide the backdrop for some Far-East inspired guitars for the first five minutes. Halfway through, the guitars fade away and allow the background noise to come to the forefront. After a brief hiatus, the guitars return for the final three minutes of the song. "Being Born Broken II" is an interlude of weird electronic noises and processed vocals - one sounds like a child, the other like a female. Dongoski and Turner round out Drawing Voices with "A Choir Speaks." This song again has a lot more noticeable drawing/sketching sounds, even a little bit of what sounds like erasing in there too. There are sequences of a heavily distorted drawing sound that has been slowed to the point that it sounds like a jet engine as well as a closing portion that sounds vaguely like chanting.
Drawing Voices ultimately rates extremely high on the originality scale, but as far as listenability and replay value, there is a quite a bit lacking. If Dongoski and Turner were to turn out more songs like "The Shrine of Wreckless Illumination" and "A Choir Speaks" I could see myself enjoying thing quite a bit. However, the songs that are nothing more than pencil scribbles recycled or bizarre noises through a hundred different electronic predecessors are just a tad too obscene for me. Turner does get points for the stellar artwork; he always seems to deliver in that department.
