Joni Void Every Life Is A Light

Joni Void, the artistic persona of Montréal-based French-British producer Jean Néant (he/them) returns to songcraft on their warmest and most welcoming record yet, where theacclaimed sampledelic sound collagist chills out with an emotionally resonant song cycletinged by downtempo, lo-fi, avant-pop, and trip-hop.Guests include Haco, Ytamo, Sook-Yin Lee, Pink Navel and N NAO.Every Life Is A Light expands on Void's recent stylistic turn towards more languorous and mellowlo-fi production, foreshadowed by the drifting looseness and ambient bricolage of their precedingexperimental sound-art record. This transitional sensibility now shapes more defined songstructures and styles, with loops are given time and space to unspool, and rhythms shot throughthe softer-focus lens of trip-hop and dub. Every Life Is A Light swaps the twitchy insistence ofVoid's acclaimed early albums for a newfound lightness and suppleness, still imbued with all therestlessness, sonic detailing, and emotional resonance that made their name. The neurotic brokenmachinekinetics of earlier Void, summarized by Sasha Geffen as "drawing despair and wonderfrom within the vast unfeeling of digital communication" in an 8.0 Pitchfork review, may bechilling out, but Void is becoming an ever better conjurer of hauntological feeling. Every Life Is ALight summons this in a comparatively buoyant, benevolent, head-nodding journey more open totenderness and modest joys. Perhaps it's the sound of Void at greater peace with themselves andthe world, despite the bittersweet cost: even as it channels grief, memorializing comrades andcompanions recently deceased, this album wants light.Void's raw materials continue to draw heavily from samples (their own Walkman cassette fieldrecordingsand songs by others) and from a wide community of musical guests. Vocalists Haco on"Time Zone" and Ytamo on "Cloud Level" help levitate what could be lost tracks from a mid-90sToo Pure Records compilation of skewed-lounge electronica. Canadian m...