Malle Voss - blue forty-three (2022)

Malle Voss is Joe Houpert, who has previously recorded under the names Prayer, Loud & Sad, We Are Bright & Broken and many others. I commissioned him to do a tape for us 9 whole years ago and now here it is! I think it was worth the wait.

blue forty-three consists of one long piece, Death is Easy, which is divided into 10 discrete movements. Taken as one, Death is Easy is a fluctuating, swooping, electronic shimmer that is full of sub bass and aural glitter.

The spatially-explorative 3D-ness of the sound is intoxicating but this is really playful music – sometimes impishly so. To me, it sounds really happy and joyful, but when I played it to a companion they found the sound anxious, “like you’re in a car crash and you can hear the glass smashing around you.”

Experiences are objects. There are different ways of seeing the same thing. We cherish this.


Praise for Joe Houpert

“Here, the excitement lies in the controlled breaths, the insistent pulse and the turns at each corner. You get light and dark at the same time, gorgeous melody backed with the din of mania, the country and city all at once. An exciting glimpse at classical music dragged through the mud.” – Ear Candy

“This is the most subtle, intimate, & delicate music, soft drones humming throughout, with processed & glitched guitars, intentional banjo plucking, satiny strings, mystical field recordings, the warble & crackle of ancient analog media, this is deep music that’s full of life & emotion, it gets dark, harrowing, dipping into the dreadful void, far enough down that the light above almost but not quite disappears, but mostly this is a tender ambient that effortlessly divulges truth & peace, an insane pleasure listening to this record…” – Anti-Gravity Bunny