Portland’s Indira Valey is making a name for herself throughout the Pacific Northwest with her unpredictable live performances, combining acoustic instrumentation, loop pedal drone, and beautifully bizarre vocals. Her latest album, No Me Tengas Miedo, explores this highly experimental sound over four tracks, two of which sprawl over a period nearing the ten-minute mark.
”Back I Went Back” opens the album with a low, rolling drone, peaceful for a moment before Valey’s vocals come in, thin and wavering, like a distant distress signal, before slowly unfurling into a ghostly chorus of layered vocals. “Spinninround” employs a similar vocal approach, the track staying true to its name with a drunken, cyclical loop motif. “Wide Open” does the most wandering of any of the tracks, comparable at times to the pastoral noodling of Do Make Say Think, but with unsettling surprises along the way.
Indira Valey has a way of dreaming up vocal sounds and techniques most people seem to have never thought of, or wouldn’t dare try. On album closer “No Me Tengas Miedo No Me,” she sounds like an ancient sorceress, gothic poet, and vampire prophet all in one, and she’s downright spellbinding, spinning cosmic cobwebs in my mind.
Grab the limited cassette via Antiquated Future here, of which there are exactly three left.
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