Listen Down: Evicshen’s ‘Hair Birth’ is Utter Barbarism

Massachusetts-based artist Evicshen reinvigorates a stale noise landscape.

By Bubba Krishnamurti 

Victoria Shen, the Massachusetts-based experimental artist otherwise known as Evicshen, has released her debut LP, Hair Birth (American Dreams.) The record is an inventive new take on sonic discord buttressed by over-driven frequencies and modular synthesizers. Opening track, ‘Current Affair,’ opens harmlessly enough with soft intermittence and then quickly takes off and kicks you in the teeth. The warbling track dials through a series of soundscapes which are at once future forward and organic. Yet the golden moment on this record is ‘Under the Stall Door.’ The track is relentless and conjures up a dissonance so ugly, it’s beautiful. You know, like a bulldog puppy.

Evicshen is no boiler-plate noise artist. The nascent artist pushes the envelope at every turn by building her own hardware and pushing the sonic limitations of listening devices.

Shen began her journey of sound modification by constructing patchable analog synths while working for electronic instrument creator Jessica Rylan. Rylan herself was a former student noted synth innovator Don Buchla. Needless to say, Shen descends from a noted line of pioneers in the field of sound synthesis. Hair Birth was recorded over a series of weekends with Harvard University’s Buchla 100 and Serge modular synthesizers.

See below how the special edition of ‘Hair Birth’ includes a copper coil which acts a as a a fully functional speaker.