RETROSPECTREVIEW: Laurel Halo – Quarantine

Laurel Halo’s dazzling 2012 debut for Hyperdub captures the volatile torment of heartbreak better than much released since.

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“Words are just words
Words are just words that you soon forget”

To “quarantine” means to place into a state of forced isolation. Unlike ostracism, which is usually social, quarantining is done when necessary to prevent the spread of something. In this current moment it’s all too easy to see the real-world implications an imposed isolation entails: no movement, no contact, no prospects. The tops of the walls start to tilt forward as fear and dread begin their perilous dance.

But back in 2012, when the notion of a global pandemic eluded all but the most paranoid (and WHO health officials), Laurel Halo sought to use the concept as a way to explore heartbreak, that eternally fertile ground for artistic endeavors. In her dazzling debut for Hyperdub, the quarantining is all emotional but dictated in physical terms. Across its twelve gorgeously-staged tracks, with a heavy dose of inspiration from Yoko Kanno’s classic soundtrack for Ghost In The Shell, she pulls the listener into a vortex of despair so potent that, for some people, it might cut a little close to the bone.

Heartbreak is, of course, a necessary part of life – a truly monogamous person will undoubtedly see every relationship fail but one – but its effects on the psyche can be life-changing. If you’re on the receiving end of a broken partnership, your perception changes in very real ways: every human interaction and every conscious thought is a reminder of past times, like an active haunting. Thoughts swirl around like a pacing prisoner, the heart slows and gallops at will; thunderclouds rumble constantly underneath. It’s easy to view this state of being like a debilitating sickness, because in a physical way it is, but it’s also a sickness of the mind that might lead one to convince themselves they’re unable (or unworthy) to participate in society.

By now, we’re well aware of Laurel Halo’s gift in bridging the gap between the exactingness of chilly electronics and the messiness of humanity. Ever since this auspicious debut she’s proved her case again and again, albeit in alternate terms. Even just recently she’s brought forward an irresistible chopped salad of organic human performances presented in a digital manner via 2017’s pop-forward Dust, and she traced how the collective consciousness had finally translocated onto the Internet in 2018’s ambient Raw Wood Uncut Silk. Assessing her still-nascent discography, one could make the argument that she’s one of the 2010’s greatest unspoken electronic artists, if only because she carries such a unique, timely perspective and is able to deftly execute that perspective in a way that makes her work unmistakable.

But if her work can be assessed on that humanity-based dichotomy, Quarantine might be her album that sounds the most human, the most akin to both raw wood and uncut silk. It bears a beating heart unlike anything else in her oeuvre, and it’s also the clearest demonstration of Halo’s vocals, which are displayed plainly and without much in the way of digital manipulation. From the first few moments of its queasy opening number until its blessedly spacious last track, there’s no escaping its dire, dense atmosphere. Even at a relatively brief forty minutes it’s a lot to take in one go, but it’s offset by a focus on tender melodies that pulls the listener in just as strongly as it repulses.

Those vocal performances, while not the most technically impressive, are vital to its success. The shoe falls on “Years,” an anti-gravity chamber of a second track that finds Halo’s voice uttering harsh truths pressed so close to the ear it reads physically uncomfortable. The words are to an ex-lover but seem to be directed at herself, an incessant inner monologue that threatens to break out of the brain. “Years” comes early to alert us of the record’s focus on heartbreak, and from there she carries a series of raw moments that echo her sentiment. Her broken cries on “Carcass” are incendiary, clawing at the walls of a personal hell; she filters herself on “Holoday” as if she were the uncontrollable electric current of her brain; “Tumor” see her flattened out and dried of tears, as if the personification of depression. As on her future works, Halo treats her voice as just another instrument, singing flatly and evenly as if uttered from a computer, and it works perfectly.

Those performances may be the lifeblood of the project, but the record is just as sonically impressive. Every part is crafted with care, and every turn is rife with purpose. It’s an album, one with a consistent mood and an internal logic, and over multiple listens that logic reveals itself. The palpable dread on “Airsick” comes from the way the beats are dynamically programmed to wax and wane, how the piano sample rises and fractures, how the synth pads are notes that don’t resolve themselves. “Joy” starts from a relative point of light in its poppy harmonies and sugary synth lines but gets darker and more sickly over time, the titular feeling imminently fading until it’s merely a cheap facsimile. “Morcom,” meanwhile, makes astounding use of digital clicks and EQ’d digital percussion to color its tortured narrative until it bursts in indignation, an ancient tanka set to music. Just as a broken heart jams internal thought and weighs the bones, so does the record operate within that circumstances, embodying them completely. It’s not enough to make the scene uncomfortable; in Quarantine, Laurel Halo demonstrates how inescapable the grieving process is, how reality shifts in its dead embrace, and how within that reality a narcotic current of warped beauty exists that numbs the heart.

She also provides a fitting conclusion that ends up being the record’s masterstroke. After over half an hour of condensed anguish, “Light + Space” represents the beginning of the healing process. Its slow spacious environment and softly bouncing melody provide an antidote to the record’s pervasive claustrophobia, like the first few moments when one can step outside and breathe in fresh air. The words are still decidedly depressive, but that’s realistic; healing takes time, and it’s smart for her not to pivot to an easy conclusion. And the vocal melody itself is a comfort against the song’s gentle crashing waves; her harmonies on the chorus posit her words as reassurances instead of cruel truths. “Light + Space” may be interpretably ambiguous, but its context makes it a quiet beacon of hope rather than the final push of the coffin door.

Quarantine may have not received significant attention upon its release, and is perhaps even further lost to time, but in the eight years since it debuted I’ve not found a record that captures the volatile torment of rejection quite like this one. It’s a special album, one that’s so viscerally powerful and fills such a niche mood that I’m afraid to overplay it for fear that it might get stale, and that’s some of the highest praise I can bestow. Sure, it’s intellectually stimulating to view heartbreak as a sickness – or, more correctly, to present heartbreak as a condition that leads us to believe we’re sick – but facing a worldwide viral emergency, intellectual stimulation tends to fall by the wayside. Art does tend to fail us in times of crises. Yet amidst the anxieties we face (and will continue to face) over the coming months, it’s worth it to remember light and space wait for us in due time. Quarantines, after all, hardly last forever.

Highly recommended for restless nights.