IRFP Presents Reviews of Jessica Rylan's "New Secret" Picture Disk

CAN'T: New Secret (by Jessica Rylan) 12" Picture Disc (RRR)

Loved my first Can't album, now here's my second, truly a thing of beauty. (Prettiest picture disc of the year? Definitely. Of the century? Probably!) As on the previous Final Performance, she (Can't, a/k/a Jessica Rylan) is still playing "home-made synthesizer," creating weird instrumentals, and singing intense love songs, but my, she has really upped the ante with this release.

Final Performance was 5 little blasts in just 11 minutes, where New Secret has 6 tracks but is three times as long. Some of its tracks are shorter instrumental things, but three of them are long, patient, and powerful songs, precise and rhythmic and melodic, and they are all classics. But then, so is "Driving in the Rain," in which she gets out the tenor recorder flute and plays a lovely short and sweet solo piece that is about as "free folk" as it gets.

I love track five, "Messy Mystery," too -- it's this sparse bubbly instrumental that my 2-year-old is convinced is the sound of (his words) "fish swimming" and "going down underwater." The sounds make him laugh and he says "fish!" constantly. Late in the track when Ms. Rylan hits a real deep bending tone, he gets excited and says "FISH FART!!" I say all this not to tell you how hilarious my kid is, but to demonstrate that this is some pretty deep music that is much more than just Noise.

And then track six "Casting A Spell" is definitely the one for the annals, a 15-minute epic that lives up to its title with one of the most fragile sweet witchy melancholy melodies ever on a "Noise" record! Throw in that gorgeous painting on the B side and, well, you've got a masterpiece.

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New Secret
RRR No Cat
Pic Disc LP
£15.99 UK Post-Paid

Jessica Rylan (aka Can't) brings us New Secret, a great LP on RRR that boasts some of the most unassumingly attractive picture disk art I've ever seen- while most of these ventures shoot for the well trodden Op/ visual overload route, this one opts instead for a pleasantly grey Twombly-ish scrawl on side one, and random snaps from Jessica's family album (with captions!) on side two. Like the sounds, the whole thing is as warm and direct as an autumn campfire, and comes down the line friendly and without pretence.

I'm too much of an electronic dunce to identify what exactly is going on soundwise here, but most of it seems to be vox processed through a home-built synth oscillator filter thing, and comes out sounding like lullabies sung through a disintegrating electric fan. There's a great vibe here that reminds me of nothing so much as watching TV at my grandmother's house 25 (or so) years ago, trying to filter words from the grey blasts of static mystery coming over the black & white from faraway stations. The difference here is that Jessica has gone a long way towards making this so completely UN-mysterious (though there's undecipherable depth and darkness lurking here too) ...

while most of her noise/ electronic peers lean towards the aggro/ harsh/ confrontational (which when you think about it, is about the most obvious hill to roll the noise cart down), Jessica has instead gone for unaffected and earthy sweetness. An amazingly personal and inviting statement that will almost make you forget the harsh sounds it's all wrapped in. (Lest you think I've forgotten the folk music riffage of my opening paragraph, I should say that there's a incongruously unprocessed tenor recorder track on side two... and what's more folk than that)?

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From Aversion Online

Can't "New Secret" LP
[RRRecords]

Can't is Jessica Rylan, but I've not heard any recorded material under the Can't name versus the Jessica Rylan name, so I'm not sure if there's normally a differentiation between the two or not. I have, however, seen some of these songs performed live, so what I can say is that it's pretty interesting how similar they are in live form to the recorded documents appearing on this picture disc. The tracks are all similar to one another in their usually strange meshing of vocal work with quaint electronics, with the title track acting as a good example by building in with low-end surges and sparse, glitchy electronics with intermittent humming and other strange vocal textures. I'm not really digging how the vocals interact with the spaces in between the electronics in this one as it's a little jarring, but that was possibly the intention.

"Wishing Well" is similar but driven by singing, delivered through a filtered mic that has a warm, distant sound and lots of feedback, so the vocal delivery is pretty breathy in order to control the shift between the levels of volume and overdrive coming out of the mic. Oddly enough, "Driving in the Rain" then follows with nothing but an interlude of flute, of course recorded with a fairly dry and simplistic tone, and played in a similar manner.

"The Way Home" then introduces a shuffling electronic loop with more of the same style of soft singing breaking in against the noise textures. The combination works better in this piece, however, since the vocal delivery is stronger and the interaction between the elements more effective — gradually shifting over to a busier sort of windy distortion and feedback blend similar to that of "Wishing Well".

Side B begins with the sparse, glitchy, succinct chirps of "Messy Mystery", which rather quickly glide into a pulsing loop with some bright vocal effects for closer "Casting a Spell", which is a little more tuneful than the other material. By far the longest track, it kind of feels like a strange little song more so than an experimental piece, and definitely carries way more emotion with it than any of the other material. The manner of singing combined with the effects can make it pretty hard to make out the words to all of this stuff, but you can tell that there are actual words being enunciated, so as textural as it all may be, there are melody lines and lyrics involved, which is an odd union against the noise that, if nothing else, absolutely gives this work its own identity.

The picture disc is housed in a clear sleeve that lets the record do the talking, with a nice looking watercolor painting on one side and handwritten text with a few photos collaged on the other. Like I said, If nothing else, this is something all its own. I've never heard anything like this before, and probably never will if Jessica Rylan's name isn't tied to it. It's not the kind of thing I would listen to regularly, but I'd really like to hear more work along the lines of "Casting a Spell", which is actually a really curious and moving composition that creates more of an atmosphere. Very strange… (6/10)

Running time - 35:00 (approximately), Tracks: 6
[Notable tracks: The Way Home, Casting a Spell]