Through songs I dreamt the stories of the boat, listening to its sounds and its silences.
Rocketman is the debut album of London-based sound artist and composer, Lizzy Laurance. To work on her project, Lizzy took up temporary residence in a dilapidated dredger which was home to Illutron, an arts and technology institute in Copenhagen. Only after she commenced recording did she realise that the boat was moored on the site of the infamous ‘submarine murder’ of journalist Kim Wall by Illutron member Peter Madsen in 2018. The final track on the album is written in memory of Kim Wall.
Laurance’s album is a collage of found sounds, library samples, rhythms and beats all held together by her otherworldly vocals. Many of the recordings were made in and around the boat. Through these Laurance was able to tune in to the boat’s stories and temporal echoes; stories then expressed in her recordings and her extraordinary vocal performance.
Through the album I explore themes of gender, power, technology and violence as I try to reconcile the visionary ideals and technological accomplishments of Madsen, Illutron and our society more generally, with the destruction left in its wake.
The titles of Laurance’s ten pieces seem to suggest a grounding in the traditional pop song. But from the first track, Promenade, the whole pop form is subverted. Promenade opens with an intrusive male voice and a female sigh that suggests an unwelcome approach or interruption. It builds with the sound of water, piano and excited shouts and is driven by the rhythm of bass drum and scratchy snare.
Baby Loves echoes with claustrophobic, below the water-line sounds. Further layers are added with keyboards, hammering on wood and an ominous sound like exposed piano strings being bashed. Laurance’s achingly beautiful vocals are threatened with being totally overwhelmed by the background sounds, but somehow they remain defiant.
Come Down is a piece driven by pulsing percussion and soulful vocal washes. Accents of sculpted horn sounds enrich the mix.
The title Gasoline Blue Jeans suggests a trip into Americana, but the piece actually serves up an industrial landscape of sound with evocations of physical and spiritual emptiness. Vocals flood over this landscape while a dark undercurrent of the male gaze threatens from beneath.
Too Hard to Die is an unsettling piece driven by the pulse of an engine room.
White Nights, meanwhile, seems to emerge from deep underground and arrives with a roll of machine thunder. Laurance’s vocals swoop above the storm of sound and refuse to be submerged.
Shine features another extraordinary vocal performance, while other voices lurk in the shadows behind a robotic industrial soundscape.
Famous opens with the sound of gulls and continues with an ever-present industrial hum. It was a 2020 single release and is, in many ways, the stand-out track of the album. Laurance relates the story of its inception:
It’s written largely from the perspective of a man who stalked me while I was staying on the boat [in Copenhagen] last summer. He had this delusion that I was hanging around public libraries with the sole aim of trying to seduce him. I wrote this song, in part, about the version of me that he had in his mind. It’s also about other things as well though, like … what perpetuates toxic masculinity when it’s so obvious that no one benefits? Or, why, as a society, do we keep falling in love with bad men?
Rocketman, the title track, evokes a huge landscape of sound and sky and open spaces. We hear a jet engine, industrial hum, a screeching of guitar and an assault of metallic percussion. Despite the similar song title, this is a long way from Elton John.
Finally, Song for Kim Wall is a piece suffused with a palpable feeling of sadness. A sense of sinister claustrophobia seems to surround it and the track, and with it the whole album, comes to a sudden, shocking end. It feels unfinished, perhaps deliberately so, as an acknowledgement of the unfinished life it celebrates.
The idea of the concept album fell into disgrace forty-odd years ago, its bloated excesses kicked into touch by the three chords of punk. I was a punk, am a punk, but I think the term concept album is due a revival and Rocketman is a good place to start. Listen to it outdoors if you can. Listen to it below deck on an old boat if you dare.
Lizzy Laurance
Lizzy Laurance makes grainy pop-collages inspired by spatial locations; inner, outer and cyber. Stitching together “found” music, ambient sound, over-familiar music sample libraries and songwriting, she explores the mythology of pop music and the icons that inhabit it. These icons tell stories of female identity, image-making and toxic masculinity.
Hear Rocketman at Bandcamp here
Lizzy’s website is here
Instagram: @lizzy_laurance
