On her first extended play to feature her own compositions, the classically trained bassoonist Rebekah Heller juxtaposes skronking and bluesy free jazz with wry odes to anxiety, like the lissome and ironic ‘My voice’ whose cooing chorals boast of her conservatory training while betraying a fraught strive for perfection and a fear of being seen, as Heller struggles to detach her own musical expression from a litany of influences.
‘This is my history, and this is my voice’ she proclaims, ‘worshipping at the altar of every other composer, always filtering my art through someone else’s voice’. Then over cawing seagulls on ‘Fiction’ she unloads a barrage of breathless ‘what ifs’, before the final hush of an ‘ode to Joy’ which is both subtle and sophisticated, lulling and sibilant (from the concrete borders of fields full of gold).
