Martha Skye Murphy’s debut album UM is a record of extraordinary contrasts. She clashes moments of baroque beauty and others of cataclysmic electronic noise, textures that are by turns organic and artificial, hi-fi and lo-fi, and narratives that blur the line between fact and fiction. It consists of field recordings and samples from the wilderness of New Zealand to a storm rolling over Wales, from footsteps on cobblestone to the rumble of a 1968 Chrysler. Collaborations with the likes of pioneering sound artist Roy Montgomery (who provides the aforementioned Chrysler) and Claire Rousay are finely intertwined with rigorous studio sessions with co-producer Ethan P. Flynn, and then again with sparse voice memos of Murphy improvising alone at her piano.
(Photo Credit: Ben Murphy)
