released July 10, 2024
Inquiri â See You Someday (Past Inside the Present, 2024)
On See You Someday, Los Angeles-based Inquiri (aka Lacey Harris) creates an emotional fantasia that ties together threads of choral, orchestral, IDM, glitch and ambient music, all backed by silken vocals and diaristic field recordings. The result is a powerfully personal reckoning with grief, loss, and the complicated task of finding a place in the universe as an individual. Each meticulously constructed piece incorporates Harrisâs ambient prowess (as heard on the 2023 bvdub collaboration, Destroyesterday) into a realm of experimental songcraft that finds quiet intensity in its use of soft distortion, sample-based polyrhythms, and heavily layered voices.
âMy Eyes Openedâ emerges from a liminal haze worthy of a Dali dream sequence, unraveling with delay-steeped electronics and rapturous mystery. The propulsive, vocal-heavy standout âBe The Heroâ follows, introducing many of the albumâs core themes of love and lament, and of seeking courage in the expanse of the cosmos. Here, a nimble bass line backs intricate rhythm programming, and a rush of rich textures nests Harrisâs main vocal in a colorful sonic galaxy that rewards a headphone experience.
The driving element of âThey Come Aroundâ is a reversed synth line placed under complex, glitchy beats and bubbling melodies that crisscross the stereo field, creating a controlled environment where entropy and turmoil still play their inevitable roles. Harris sings, as if in a trance, âWhen they come around / I draw / Draw another circle / When it comes around / I follow / Follow it until I understand.â As with every chapter of See You Someday, there is a vibrant human core around which birds glide, waters eddy and moon phases come and go with organic grace.
âOur Souls Kissedâ incorporates the angelic voice of Past Inside the Present veteran marine eyes (aka Cynthia Bernard) into a sprawling calm thatâs as enchanting as anything in her catalog. Spacious percussion skitters across a weighty low-end bed, as a cyclone of sound evokes the paralyzing magic of loveâs first moments when, against all logic, it seems that such a feeling might just last forever. By Harrisâs account, it was âby far the most difficult piece to finish on the album, as it is the oldest, the most emotionally-charged, and one of the most important stories I wanted to get right.â
This fact hints at the time frame of See You Someday, which was composed over a span of ten years that included the death of the artistâs father, as well as several geographical and personal upheavals. Harris notes that many tracks ânever felt quite ready to share on their own, until they were finally placed alongside the others; once I began arranging them into a specific order, I started to see that they were telling a very specific story.â
This sense of personal inventory carries across âThen Heaven Fellâ and âWhich Way Homeâ, where heartbreaking, disembodied voices and haunting strings loop across carefully arranged patterns, forming a kinetic interplay of elements both loose and taut. Title track, âSee You Somedayâ, is a masterfully layered, beatless soundscape whose low-mid rumble, echoing whispers and fibrous flickers weave through the stereo field, returning to the dream space from which the album materialized.
âTheyâre Gone Foreverâ draws open the curtains on a bright vista, with delayed piano plinks bouncing between the channels and sparse, sampled programming that mimics an insect colony dismantling a fallen tree. As an arrangement of melancholy strings and humming bass gathers, Harris plays her final card: a field recording from the location of her fatherâs ashes, underscoring a spoken word passage of her mother talking about him, all veiled in effects that simulate a memory vanishing beyond reach. It is a compelling moment, perfectly chosen to close an album full of them.
She summarizes: âAs I tried to heal mentally and physically from [my fatherâs] loss, I was grasping everywhere I could to find some sense of belonging â who I was at my core, what that meant, whether what I did mattered, all sorts of questions that may arise with our first real experience of profound grief and loss. This record documents my experience of slowly finding answers, healing emotional and physical trauma, learning what love actually means, and finding my voice in the world.â
All songs written, recorded, and produced by Inquiri (Lacey Harris)
Additional vocals and textures on Our Souls Kissed by marine eyes (Cynthia Bernard)
Mastered by Brock Van Wey
Photography by Lacey Harris
Design and layout by zakè
Šâ 2024 Past Inside the Present
This is PITP50
â˝
pitp.us / pitp.shop
inquiri.bandcamp.com
âžď¸âžď¸âžď¸ REVIEWS
"Los Angeles-based artist Inquiri aka Lacey Harris blends choral, orchestral, IDM, glitch, and ambient music with silken vocals and diaristic field recordings on her sublime new album See You Someday. This emotional album explores grief, loss, and self-discovery as tracks like 'My Eyes Opened' and 'Be The Hero' showcase Harris's ambient prowess with delay-steeped electronics and intricate rhythms. 'They Come Around' features glitchy beats and reversed synths, while 'Our Souls Kissed' includes angelic vocals. Composed over a decade, the album documents Harris's journey through personal upheavals and healing so it is a deeply personal and rewarding work."
-Juno Records
âŚâŚâŚ
"See You Someday touches on a lot of different styles and approaches to assemble its dreamy and psychedelic sound. You can hear a lot of pure ambience, however, most of the time it is infused with ambient pop aesthetics, some big string arrangements, and straight up psychedelia. All of this is immersed in a myriad of smooth and pleasing ambience, coming especially from the layers and layers of synth pads, and the extensive use of the piano, which always sounds really clean; it is very much used in ambient fashion, with some motifs being repeated and little to no emphasis on tangible chord progressions, sometimes itâs just some notes fleeting by, making it so it is never invasive and can easily blend in with the rest.
This should make it quite clear that atmosphere is this albumâs strong suit, but itâs also quite interesting how some moments do really latch onto pop structures; examples are tracks like âBe the Heroâ and âThe Come Around,â but not solely because theyâre more vocal-centric than most material on the LP, rather because they seem to bring back certain parts as if they were choruses. Theyâre not actual choruses, hence why this isnât actual pop music per se, but they do have a proper sense of structure due to how they alternate their different sections; this makes it so that both of these tunes are quite memorable. On the other hand, âThey Come Aroundâ is easily one of the albumâs highlights, its lead melody is really beautiful and I like just how big and slow it is, it makes the whole tune a lot more immersive. Thereâs also a great contrast with the vocals, which are really laid back instead, making the song as a whole a big moment to let yourself sink.
âThen Heaven Fellâ is also a highlight, one of the more immersive tracks. Its sound almost latches onto the aesthetics of vaporwave, especially with its steamy beat and blurry vocals; the surreal soundscape it creates is really pleasant, and it is especially engaging thanks to how repetitive it is; really something you can just immerse yourself in instead of something that youâd really expect to be gratified by.
The last two tracks are also quite enjoyable; theyâre the more ambient pieces of the album, as both are rather sparse and patiently enveloping. The title track is a really captivating, pad-based ambient track, while âTheyâre Gone Foreverâ is a bit more emotionally impactful due to how many different layers it stacks. The piano is seriously beautiful, and all the vocals and really vast pads make the piece feel very organic, in a way. A sound this pretty isnât really elsewhere on this LP, but it is really comforting as its tail, makes it end on a sunny spring afternoon."
-Igloo Magazine
âŚâŚâŚ
"Los Angeles-based Lacey Harris makes very large ambient music as Inquiri. The label say she âcreates an emotional fantasia⌠a powerfully personal reckoning with grief, loss, and the complicated task of finding a place in the universe as an individualâ. Opener âMy Eyes Openedâ is a squall of strings repeating over and over with the ominous drone underneath sounding like waves rolling in on the shore. The thing that strikes you is the tracks here are crafted into song-length pieces, mostly around the four-five minute mark, which is unusual for this sort of thing.
The tracks feel weighty, âBe The Heroâ has the best shimmering intro and it lasts for the whole length of the track, Laceyâs distance vocal sounding no unlike Tracey Thorn. In fact, âOur Souls Kissedâ has a vocal guest in the shape of the brilliant marine eyes. The track itself grows and swells to a crescendo before tailing off, like climbing up a hill and then back down again. Excellent stuff as always from our friends at Past Inside the Present."
- Moonbuilding Magazine
_________________________
