Dory Hayley - I Love Evil [Redshift Records]

Put out on the circuit via the Canadian Redshift Records imprint on September 26th, 2k25 is "I Love Evil", the latest 2CD album set by Vancouver's explorative soprana singer Dory Hayley who explores a set of pieces by Morton Feldman, Jordan Nobles, Katerina Gimon, Rodney Sharman and Cassandra Miller over a total course of more than two hours runtime. Opening with Hayley's interpretation of Feldman's "Three Voices" which sees her performing alongside two pre-recorded vocal tracks of herself over an extended playtime of 67 minutes, carefully layering her ethereal tonal shifts to an outerworldly effect which surely extends the realm of Contemporary and Modern Classical music due to its score'esque qualities and oscillating nature which might also resonate with fans and followers of hypnotic Avantgarde Ambient and whirling Deep Listening Music for a reason, especially thinking of the spine-tingling climax around minute 44ff. here. This rather enchanted approach to panoramic vocals layerings, this time emhanced by widescreen electronic textures and drifting atmospheric processing, continues with her take on Jordan Nobles' "XYZ" which presents a quite Psychedelia-infused listening sonic experience before Katerina Gimon's "Shadow/Light" brings forth an amalgamation of atmospheric Ambient and more of a Classical Opera-leaning take on vocal performance, with Hayley exploring fluttering high frequency vibratos and making use of her full register, in parts backed by a surprisingly rhythmic and ecstatic foundation whereas Cassandra Millers' final cut "How Weird He Must Think The World Is" even employs an array of disembodied whispers, conversational fragments and processed remnants of Spoken Word alongside heavenly choir sequences and rather noisy, aggressive and off-kilter outbursts dynamically overpowering the rest of the composition whilst emerging from the horrifying depths of the sonic underworld just to provide a brief overview of what fans and followers of Contemporary Avantgarde can expect from this album.

Album artwork on Instagram!