Last year, vocalist, composer, improviser and producer Claire Dickson released The Beholder via New Amsterdam Records, an album on which she used everything from samples and found sounds to synths, percussion and vocals to create her own sonic worlds. Moreover, soundscapes which exist within a kind of perpetual motion—always moving, always changing, as though charged by an energy inherent within the transitionary spaces of momentum—something Dickson embraced within the writing process. “The songs are mostly through-composed, the form is continuously pushing forward, turning a new page” as she explains, and the archetype suggested by the title is formed within this idea. “The beholder radiates outward and forward,” Dickson continues. “They observe, they love, they dream. Their sense of self becomes fractured and dreamlike, defined by their surroundings and the person they love.”
To celebrate the year anniversary of the release, Dickson is sharing ‘Skin of Words’ as a single, and anyone who missed The Beholder first time around would be advised to take notice. Crafted from characteristically dreamlike sounds, the song submerges the listener within an ambiguous, unanchored atmosphere. One where the mood is never static, the sound always moving but never within the neat arc of narrative. Instead, differing sensations are juxtaposed so that tension might be achieved, not least the pairing of granular textures with sweeping movement. “I was interested in the contrast and coexistence of high drama, drops, big sounds, and lush textures, with delicate, close, subtle, sensorial sounds,” Dickson continues. “It felt important for moments to have the tactility that comes from a sample of the rain or a bell or some rocks being jostled together. To me, reality has this quality; moments of sensory blending and cohesion punctuated by the hyperreal. The archetype of the beholder is fascinated by this way of being—unmoored from the trappings of actuality.”
