Kate Westfall is a familiar face in northern and central Ohio from her appearances as musician and poet. Her new album "Vokate" gathers a wide range of influences to create a lush new musical world. Almost all the sounds on the album are directly generated by Westfall, whether it be through singing words, non-verbal vocalizing, breathing, clapping, clicking or stomping.
A track such as "Global Emotion" combines a chanted rhythmic base, not unlike some of the experimental vocal pieces by American avant-garde composer Meredith Monk, with layers of swaying, harmonized melodies and interpolated stanzas of poetry, sounding in the distance, yet read in a completely unaffected manner. Westfall's voice is bluesy in inflection, yet carefully polished and controlled. Her songs tend to build in layers of sweet, ecstatic harmony over a syncopated pedal-point drone, giving them something of a worldbeat/Afropop feel.
Indeed, the international association is apparent, as Westfall's music isn't so much emerging from one place or style as it is an ocean touching upon the shores of many lands. The aquatic element is strong in "Mermaid," featuring a mysterious, Neptunian musical background to a poem from Westfall's chapbook, "Ladies of the Sea." The musical seascape sounds like a cross between The Doors' "Horse Latitudes" and English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams' choral setting of Shakespeare's "Full Fathom Five."
In the anxious but magical "Cloudstep," the main lyric is buried too deeply to discern a lot of the words, especially as another spoken layer covers it in places, and the wordless "background" vocals are front and center. But this all seems very intentional on Westfall's part, using the texts as springboards to creating a lush, seductive musical fabric that sweeps the listener away.
"Bucket A Water" is like a latter-day grandchild of a chain-gang work song, grown urbanized and sophisticated without forgetting its roots. Such skillful fusions provide considerable momentum throughout the album, though a sense of stasis can settle in on a longer track like "Please Don't," where the harmonic base never changes. Westfall can be obscure and remote in places, but it only adds to the mysterious allure of her music. She builds her world in loops and layers, pyramids of sounds and watery harmonies. Her vocal range is impressive, going from a throaty alto to a sweet soprano while at the same time freely traveling along the continuum from folk style to polished poise.
A little bit of distortion creeps into the recorded sound on a few tracks, with all the layering, looping and processing, but it's really remarkably clear for such intricate mixing of layers.
Mark Jordan - Mount Vernon News
