Upset The Rhythm – 27th June 2025
Christopher Nosnibor
It’s rare to be presented with something that has no immediate or obvious reference or context in terms of other music. But this is where I find myself with This Material Moment, the sixth album by Me Lost Me. And so it proves necessary to delve into the creative process for what Newcastle-based experimental artist Jayne Dent describes as “the most emotionally raw album I’ve ever made”. And so it is that for this release, she utilised ‘the automatic writing techniques she developed during a workshop with Julia Holter, and in the process has spun her music in different directions that draws on poetry, psalms and using mesostic poems and phonetic translations to generate words.’
And in this context, This Material Moment makes sense – at least in its own way. While automatic writing has a long history, dating back to the 16th century, it grew in cultural awareness via Dadaism, before becoming synonymous with Surrealism, and that fact that the results have yielded Dent’s ‘most emotionally raw album’ should not necessarily be a surprise – the theory is that that the process is dissociative, enabling a free passage between the subconscious and the page, with the mind freed from the constraints of self-censorship and linear thought. And This Material Moment very much seems to present an explosion of unfiltered, often free-flowing ideas, untethered by the conventions of form or structure.
The cover art alludes to the album’s quirkiness, but in a way which rather too easy, a shade gimmicky, perhaps, failing to convey the level of nuance and complexity contained therein.
It’s on the second track, ‘Compromise!’ that the level of ‘otherness’ which defines the album. The drumming is weighty, serious, and Dent’s voice adopts an air of detachedness which is hard to define… there’s both a folksiness and elements of Eastern influence in the way it quavers against the dramatic, expanding backdrop which comes to resemble something of a mystically-hued, almost abstract, Burroughsian psychological interzone.
AA
AA
And so Me Lost Me leads the listener through a succession of dreamscapes which are often simultaneously idyllic and nightmarish. There’s a shanty-like tone to ‘Lasting, Not to Last’, but there are shrill, terrifying wails of strings or feedback which conjure images of dead souls trapped within this dimension. ‘A Painting of the Wind’ presents a sense of the unheimlich. It’s a lilting folk song… but something sits just to the left of centre, the instrumentation isn’t readily recognisable as anything, there are layer and something about is not of this plane. ‘I want to be carried away’, she intimates, and yes, perhaps so do I, I find myself thinking.
The clamour of church bells on ‘Still Life’ chimes a cord of an historical nature, evoking times past with a certain sepiatone sensation, but ‘A Souvenir’ strips everything back to an acapella – albeit multi-layered – delivery, with folk-influenced harmonies conjuring a sense of a bygone era which in many ways contrast with much of the album’s lyrical content.
I find myself flailing here: how to articulate the disconnections and disparities which are the very essence of this album? These disconnections and disparities are nowhere more highlighted than on ‘Ancient Summer’, where Steeleye Span style trad folk meets prog with a darker, almost goth vibe, with a dash of jazz and trip-hop thrown into the mix. ‘A Small Hand, Clamped’ may offer so many meanings in terms of its title: the words aren’t easy to decipher, but the atmosphere… Oh, the atmosphere. It billows and breezes, while a strolling bass… strolls.
Sometimes, albums which are ‘awkward’ to place are a turn-off in their ‘wrongness’, but This Material Moment is so absorbative, compelling, it’s impossible not to be dragged right into its very heart.
This is art which more accurately reflects our lived realities. No conversation really exists as a straightforward back-and-forth whereby each participant delivers a neat line of dialogue, and there isn’t a second in anyone’s life where their thoughts take for form of clear-cut, structurally-sound sentences. And so it is that Material Moment speaks not in a way we can readily pinpoint or identify, because it reaches us through deep, subconscious channels. It’s not an accessible album, and it’s certainly not an easy album to hail for its commercial potential. But it is an understated and yet immensely powerful album – beautiful, crafted, a folk album in many respects, but also an experimental work that seeks to explore dark psychological spaces.
AA
AA
Aural Aggravation 