Tonotopy by Elizabeth Cottern

Elizabeth Cottern’s 2017 debut, ‘Heschl’s Gyrus’, represented something of an outlier for Other Forms in terms of its embrace of noise and dissonance. Will the artist's return in 2023 extends the label’s gamut into even further unfamiliar territory? Over the intervening half-decade, Cottern has been seemingly quiet, although there are rumours of self-released cassettes, as well as releases under pseudonyms on other labels.

The titles of the recordings would seem to bear this out, as ‘Heschl’s Gyrus’ ended with ‘Akoasm III’, whereas ‘Tonotopy’ begins with ‘Akoasm XI’. The sound, too, speaks to a progression, a stripping away of their previous maximalist tendencies to reveal a stark palette of reverberant oscillator pulses, howling feedback and occasional rhythmic washes of white noise.

Apparently recorded live and only later split into nine sections, ‘Tonotopy’ documents Cottern subjecting their source material to an extremely volatile feedback chain, which spews out anything from piercing sinewave volleys to rumbling, overdriven bass squalls. Notwithstanding the precariousness of such a setup, Cottern demonstrates a mastery of their instruments, sculpting the feedback with a sense of nuance, as well as drama. The result feels both scouring and, perversely, incredibly meditative.

Auditory excavations. Eremitic music. Pareidolia.

Somewhere in Pictland.