Andrew Liles, "New York Doll"
The liner notes read, "This recording is numerologically accurate andanagrammatically active." It's a journey from the recesses of the humanmind to the world of words and sounds; Andrew Liles has resurrected hislove for the anagram and created two discs of inverted uneasinesspractically bathing in the dread and fear of every human psyche. Infraction
If amodel were to look into the mirror and see past all the make-up andfake admiration, he or she might see their face arranged into somethingdreadful, like the sounds Liles swoops up and twists into shimmeringstrands of crawling self-doubt. Beginning with a "Journey" and endingit in the same (but massively rethought) place, Liles deconstructs analready geographic puzzle of locations and ideas in order to reveal theparodies inherent within communication, thoughts, and recordings.Voices pan, distort, and stretch to their limits, connecting theseemingly empty space between aural recognition and the dead maze ofconcentrated mass that floats through the soul of the drone. New York Dollhas been around for awhile, now, and as much as I love Liles' work,I've been absolutely afraid of this piece. All the loose ends andcontradictory paths lurching beneath the electric activity of the mindare pieced and sewn together on this record. The entire album reeks ofa discomfort that places my head in a discrete and incrediblyuncomfortable position, much like viewing the whole of an enigma, whichsimultaneously does and does not make sense. I've found myselflistening to this record more out of curiosity than out of enjoymentand, with but the second disc excluded, much of what Liles has done onthis full-length feels more like a puzzle than a record. The notes onthe sleeve, the titles of the songs, the hauntingly robotic words, andthe general ghastliness all add up to a kind of riddle, beseeching meto move around inside of the album and find its bones, discover itsDNA, and finally unravel it in a self-destructive fit. The album pansbetween consistent tones, clicks, static, and eerie atmospherescomposed of pianos, telephones, and urban pandemonium. Never confidentthan any one approach will exact the necessity of his paranoia, Lilesfills this album up with all the conspiracy and awkward connection ofthe most damning philosophical theories. After finishing the record itis impossible to deny that everything is connected by necessity, a limbof some central organism throbbing and decaying, pulsing through everyheartbeat and uttered word in human and animal history. There issomething waiting in the spaces between this album and its the mostunnerving portrait of the soul he's yet to conceive. Even asrecognizable voices fill the stereo spectrum on the second disc, Lilesis laughing at the opinion that it must be terrestrial, of this world, and not some product of the mind extracting itself from nothing.
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