By Sammy Stein
The Roles We Play To Disappear will be released by acclaimed artist Paula Rae
Gibson on Fri 1st of November on 33 Xtreme label.
It is an album of experimental songs, and electronica written and produced collaboratively with electronic musician and trumpeter, Alex Bonney and
award-winning pianist, Kit Downes with notable contributions by Rob Luft on
guitar and Matthew Bourne on piano, cello, and synth.
The album was already featured at an exhibition of Paula’s portraits of
emotion, ‘Be Alive With Me’ – a photographic tribute to her late husband,
British film director Brian Gibson – which exhibited Tuesday 1st– Sunday 6th
October 2024 at Fitzrovia Chapel, London, W1T 3BF.
Gibson has the gift to transfer emotion from her heart and soul into the
music she creates and here she excels. This album is a stark, deeply
emotive song cycle and the way Gibson puts sounds and musicians together
and how the music has been produced could be compared to several others but
in truth, it is pure Gibson, and the sound is uniquely hers. The press
office informed me this album was ‘brilliant and utterly beautiful’ and
they were right. This is the embodiment of ensemble work across which vocal
lines pitch and pivot to capture and deliver specific and intimate emotions
in a beautifully worked manner. Completely immersive, this music gets to
your soul, traversing genres and delivering heartfelt, soul-warming music.
This song cycle explores deep emotions including some of the darker facets
of commitment to a relationship like breakdown, and entrapment and Gibson
creates a sense of intimacy as she reveals layer after layer of her inner
self. Yet, despite the emotional energy the music contains, Gibson retains
pitch and control of tone and volume and there is clearly a deep resonance
between the music supporting the voice and the vocal lines. The musicians
are given places to shine too and one of the characteristics of this
recording is the quality of the ensemble work. Gibson occupies the
periphery of the music at times, while emerging from its core at others,
creating a sense of ethereal, spiritual connection.
There is urgency, a sense of not understanding yet also at other times deep
insights into the soul, memories, and the transforming power of time,
peace, and above all, connective love. It is difficult to put into words
the emotional charge that feels contained within the songs and lyrical
lines and the music perpetuates this instinctively with arrangements that
soar and rise at the perfect moments.
‘Heart Off The Hook’ is deeply moving with Gibson’s vocals strikingly
atmospheric across the delicately placed percussive background. At times,
the whispering eeriness of Gibson’s voice is so moving it deftly embodies
the lyrical narrative of the number. The story is of giving oneself, ‘no
one gets invited to my heart for very long’ yet listen further and you
realise– they surely did. The echoed piano notes in the final phrases offer
a sense of a void into which those emotions are being tipped.
‘Ashes As Confetti’ develops from the backdrop of electronic soundwaves
with Gibson asserting vocal lines across the top. The warping keys and
intricate percussive rhythms vie perfectly creating a density of sound
Gibson’s ghostly voice rises phantom-like above.
‘Necessary Drama’ is lighter, airy and features stringed effects and
chorded delights, across which Gibson flits and dips, her rich, warm voice
questioning the meaning of love and leaving. The shocker of the final line,
‘She buried her son, her friends, her husband, her everyone’ sums up the
atmosphere and heartfelt depths of the number.
The beautifully worked ‘The Silence and The Shadow’ is a perfect vehicle
for highlighting the talents of Alex Bonney’s trumpet as it drops in
periodically, releasing temporarily the genie that wafts across the surreal
lines of voice and background.
Gibson is adept at using her voice to encapsulate profound thoughts,
sometimes sad and often with deeper meaning. From the brooding dark energy
and gorgeous harmonics contained in ‘My Hope’s Back’ to the brightness of
‘Necessary Drama’ and the twists and turns (as that number is not on a
light subject) that surprise and capture the listener.
The easy, relaxed essence of ‘Fall Into You,’ about the uniting of souls,
and the interesting noises in the background belie the charged emotions of
the track. The short ‘Lover Two Takes You To Lover Three’ is worth its 48
seconds because this track evolves into ‘Makes No Difference to The Trees’
which is a delight of spoken and sung voice, electronic atmospheres, and
intricate rhythms, that seem to capture energy like an intake of breath
that is held and then exhaled in waves and ripples of sonic delight. The
contained energy builds and builds. ‘I Am Not’ is simply glorious with a
wonderful deep ‘cello voice pitted against Gibson’s breathy, vocals.
Many of the tracks seem to carry a pulse, like a heartbeat and this maybe
encapsulates the life force that feels like it works its way through this
music.
The eerie, surreal ‘3 Am Always’ morphs into ‘Ashes as Confetti’ reprise
which in turn develops into an energised, slightly unbalanced number that
closes this album perfectly with male and female voices pitched across a
percussive background, topped by warping strings, among them a wonderfully
deep bowed ‘cello line. The final spoken words are ‘I can’t save you’ but
this album does just that. It saves us from complacency, and despair
because, while there is music like this, there is hope. This album is a
thing of beauty, period.