Insect Ark, her new solo electronic hybrid project, finds Schechter at her most sonically malleable as singular notes become their own orchestral frays. Long Arms is a three-track EP clocking in at a fairly succinct sixteen minutes. With nothing more than a sampler, bass, lapsteel, and keyboard at her disposal, Schechter dissects each note with a fevered focus, engaging her instruments not simply as a means to an end but perhaps as an extension of herself. The title track begins the brief but brilliant journey in ambience that feels and sounds prophetic to the relationship between both the dissonance and harmony that twist themselves, vine like, around each track here. Second track “Lift Off” begins, appropriately enough, with an otherworldly sound looped over the discordant frame of Schechter’s bass. The track is deliberate in its crawl as the notes are allowed ample time to breathe and bleed into the next plane of their existence on the scale.
The EP closes with the droning and beautiful “Symbols” – a five-minute exploration of Schechter’s innate sense of melody threading its way through a seemingly impassable wall of feedback-drenched noise. It’s essentially the most remarkable characteristic of the EP and a testament to Insect Ark’s conceptualization of sound. There’s no doubt concerning Schechter’s virtuosic capabilities as evidenced by her previous work. With Insect Ark, however, the grandiose is reduced to a captivating and sonically moving singularity that bears no need for over production. The sounds here are laid bare, with each note wriggling its way to the surface before muting itself to be buried and revived again in the loop. It’s not that the landscapes created on Long Arms are entirely new. It’s the passages Schechter creates to get there that are wholly brilliant and haunting. Long Arms is available now courtesy of Geweih Ritual Documents.
