The orange sky melts with the red earth. No horizon, only a dashed line of stunted trees. The sun rises white. The vast-red sparks alight, a field of fire. A kangaroo leaps, jumps, up and down. Plumes of dust rise at its feet. Its fat, furred thighs inflate and its tail whips, halves the dusty clouds. A fly vibrates its cellophane wings, dodges the tail. It circles the kangaroo, its head, for a moment, like a halo.
Nothing’s As It Seems plays.
The ominous hum, streets busy, congestion droning. The motley throng crisscross, red and yellow lights paint. The arched silhouette of the harbour bridge frames a scarlet sky. Cranes pierce the skyline, twisted metal fingers.
So Here We Are plays.
GORDI is space. GORDI is a wide, open zenith. GORDI is expansive elegance. No really. Her music does not fling you into some heightened paroxysm of musical joy, rather it confers ‘the pause’. In its tender way, it leans in, brushes softly against you, tousles a hair at the top of your neck, and plants you in the pregnant present. If in the city or the country, dank alleyways or rolling moors, besmirched horizons or glass-clear skies, no matter where you are, this music will make you see (and hear and touch and taste).
When I first popped the album on, I was reclined (rather, declined and declining) in a carefully architected structure of quilts and pillows. As I continued to listen, I felt the feathered distributions of my quilt, saw morn-light flitter on the spines of my (unread) books, listened to the cacophony of birds and trolleys outside, and thought, ‘my my, this is all very beautiful’. GORDI, my dear friends, is a musical mystic pulled from the pages of some pastoral romance.
There is something beloved and sweet in GORDI’s fey folk-cum-dreamwave, that has been unfelt for quite sometime. Her unabashed use of the vocoder to multiplex her voice, her delicate melding of natural acoustics with digital bleeps and burps, her hushed by fractured lyricism – all this places her somewhere between Imogen Heap and Julianna Barwick (the queen of nebulous ghost-soundscapes).
Too long has big-pop been strutted about by squawking and peacocking egotists (male and female). We must find in this time the ruthless tenderness of Kate Bush, the coarse-as-rock poeticism of Patti Smith, the bucolic brilliance of Joni Mitchell, and we must glory in it. Whilst I would not yet compare GORDI to the panoply of greats that precede her, I would venture as far to say that she has the germ of unadulterated artistry.
So get this album, put on So Here We Are, and go for a walk. The lo-fi piano will thicken the air with pathos. The vocoder-ballad will wander its way into your corners. Or put on Wanting, and feel Hermes wings at your ankles as GORDI ushers your flight. Watch a field bloom in bouquets of technicolour. Witness the death and birth of clouds.
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‘Clever Disguise’ is out May 13, grab a pre-order here.
Watch: Gordi – Can We Work It Out
