Send "Astrid Williamson " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 When I was in college, I had a lot of girl friends who performed in student dance groups. I’d go to the shows sometimes, and, since I have little to no interest in dance, a lot of my attention naturally gravitated toward the music choices. You’d hear a smattering of various genres—rap, mainstream pop, dubstep, dance mashups—but without a doubt, the most common thing you’d hear was a very specific type of music: slow, reverb-heavy, vaguely industrial ballads with looped beats. I’ve come to refer to it as “college student dance group music”, for lack of a better descriptor. Plenty of artists, good and bad, have either dabbled or made their name in CSDG music; Seal, for one, or Imogen Heap.The reason I talk about this kind of music is that nearly every song on Pulse, Scottish singer-songwriter Astrid Williamson’s fifth album, is guaranteed to end up as background music to sociology majors reaching up at the ceiling and doing weird quasi-yoga in blackbox theaters, for better or worse. Williamson began her career as the frontwoman for the energetic indie rock group Goya Dress in the ‘90s, but on Pulse, Williamson works entirely in haunted sonic landscapes populated by echoing pianos and ambient noise, resulting in a sound that’s at turns boring and captivating. Williamson enlisted the help of Brian Eno collaborator Leo Abrahams for Pulse, and Eno’s influence is certainly felt here. In its quieter, sparer moments, the album evokes Eno’s “Music for Airports” as well as contemporary ambient artists like Akira Kosemura. On “Connected”, the centerpiece of the album, Williamson’s lilting, understated vocals whisper out a measured folk melody over a rich piano-guitar waltz; and the beautiful album closer “Paperbacks” has Williamson harmonizing with herself over an economical piano line, marveling at “How it feels / To be loved.”...full text |
| Musicomh |
| It's fair to say that without a Brian Eno production in Brighton, an album like Pulse would not exist in the back catalogue of Astrid Williamson. After witnessing the music icon's Pure Scenius show at the town's annual arts festival last year she sent a bunch of demos to guitarist Leo Abrahams. After that, the duo collaborated together and, after scrapping most of the initial songs that were written, the result is a massive departure in sound for the former frontwoman of Goya Dress. Out goes the typical singer-songwriter style of her previous output and in comes a lot more layers and ambience. The results of all this experimentation is a collection of songs that is very ambient and challenging at points but very successful. Williamson's vocals throughout are sublime; she sings in ways that totally suit the tone and stylistics of the soundscapes that she's created. The distant sounds that are often heard whirring away during most of the tracks are inventive and help change the feel of a song very powerfully (see the brilliant Reservation as a great example of how it changes an otherwise straightforward piano ballad). Most importantly though, the songwriting is stellar, and without those chops all the messing around in the studio would have been in vain. What might be striking to older fans is just how dark things have gotten, musically speaking. Underwater is when proceedings are at their most haunting with machine-like noises designed to agitate and startle in the background. Husk also manages to create a downtempo, fragile and sombre atmosphere until it explodes magnificently in its final minute or so. In a way it's very reminiscent of Portishead's Third, even if you're unlikely to find anything on here as harsh as Machine Gun or Plastic....full text |
| Living |
| The Shetland-born singer-songwriter's colourful musical history with Goya Dress and varied collaborations since have always marked her as one to watch, but Pulse will be ADVERTISEMENT reflected on as the time her career truly came into focus. Fashioned with Leo AbADVERTISEMENT rahams, an ambient specialist who works with Brian Eno, this becomes much more than music and voice. Williamson strips it back to the lilting conversational beauty of Paperbacks – up there with Joni Mitchell's best moments. Syllables are effortlessly stretched to scan over scratchy samples on Pour and Cherry, like the musical equivalent of drifting in and out of consciousness. The latter boasts a bass that sounds as though it is rumbling away in a swampy puddle. In all, this is a bold move by Astrid, who sounds much more comfortable in this context than as a stand-up singer-songwriter. The titles – Dance, Underwater, Husk – say what they have to say and elegantly move on. In contrast, Miracle is a sublime power-pop hook constructed in the 1980s and evolved in the 21st century. Connected plays like a heavenly music box, with all its workings whirring and clicking away....full text |
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