Sometimes you have to look at the edge to find the way to the middle and sometimes the middle isn’t where you expect it to be,. In the world of music, there are a great many musicians who plough the leftfield with a vengeance and Leslie Keffer could easily qualify as a member of that subset of a whole that is bigger than something but smaller than everything. Onwards, therefore, to her album “Embody”.
Leslie Keffer has been about for a while so anything that she does has as much maturity as it has experimentation in it. Loops feature in all the songs on this album with, this time, a rather unexpected overlay of conventionality making everything seem almost familiar. Sounds appear to swim freely in a sea that looks that the sea that you and I might recognise yet there is also something disquieting on show while voices, or samples thereof, appear as if to direct the listener towards something even if that something is never made entirely clear. Perhaps it is redemption without intermediate forgiveness of perhaps it is a transitory attack of artistic conscience but it is my conclusion that the signs on this road are more a distraction than a path to a destination.
I have a certain fondness for music that makes you wonder what it is all about. Is there deeper meaning – and perhaps some spiritual component – to Leslie Keffer’s music? That I do not know for certain but, nonetheless, “Embody” made for an interesting listen.
Available from Bandcamp.