On the heels of two mesmerizing albums, Vestige lifts Zora Lucent‘s hyper-intelligent sound design to even higher levels of intricacy, while her striking visual aesthetic increases her chances of becoming a multi-disciplinary force. Verilux and Astoria may have laid the groundwork for the current album, but even those releases were fully formed and ahead of their time. If there is a shift to be gleaned, it is away from alt-pop gestures and toward a fractured industrialism, where sentences break into fragments and beats into sonic rubble. Mentor Katarina Gryvul is a clear influence, although Lucent has her own distinct and dangerous sound. While her voice is most often chopped and layered, her most direct vocal moments – especially in “Molten Mirror” – serve as declarative statements and force the listener to confront uncomfortable truths.
With eleven tracks in twenty-seven minutes, Vestige is best ingested as a full meal; yet every track yields a standout moment. “Eye of the Other (Motherbeat)” begins with an Asian melody before fragmenting like light through a prism. The pristine mastering is already apparent, alternating between stereo separation and speaker-to-speaker travel. The tempo doubles in the final seconds before the track collapses, giving way to the first of three tiny interludes, whispered and intimate. “Come Closer,” beckons Lucent; or to be more specific, one of her voices offers the invitation while her other voices frolic and soar, channeling images of Björk’s “Army of Me.”
By the second interlude, Lucent has gone completely industrial, decorating her dark chords with stuttered drums and vowels. When she speaks of “coiling” in the next piece, one accepts it as the perfect word to describe the entire album; every moment, something seems ready to strike. This makes the sudden admission of vulnerability in “Undressing the Spirits” a surprise: “How can we hold on to hope?” This universal question deepens the impact of the entire album, which one now hears with new ears. “This is the sound of the end of the world,” she intones, plaintively laying the groundwork for the album’s signature moment.
The impact of “Molten Mirror” is doubled due to this new emotional space. Everyone has their breaking point, and when Lucent confronts an unknown subject with the unavoidable “Are you hearing me? Are you seeing me?”, one thinks of everything from relationships to societal collapse. The military beat is yet another expression of her newfound power. It no longer matters if the protagonist is heard or seen; the object of her question is diminished by the repeated shouts. The third interlude provides space for reflection and reassessment; in what direction will the album turn after this harrowing encounter?
The pounding “Gold, Weave Through” is marked by savage percussion; the energy level peaks as the tension is released. In the closing tracks, Lucent looks inward and outward, the sedate “New Dawn (Vestige)” reveals itself as the title track, while “Prayer Sung Backwards (Epilogue)” suggests that a spiritual element has been present all along. We have heard the artist plunging into battle and emerging victorious, not spent, but energized; not lessened, but enhanced. (Richard Allen)
a closer listen 