I Am a Tree, I Am a Mouth

Having carved out a niche performing groundbreaking chamber opera around the world, Australian singer Jane Sheldon’s first solo album finds a path through the combination of Rainer Maria Rilke (a German poet dead for almost a century), her voice, and seven gongs. On I Am A Tree, I Am A Mouth, working with one gong for each song, Sheldon launches herself into experiments with layered voices, electronic processing, and super-slowed-down fragments of sonic resonance, where she skirts the edge of avant rock to find her true singular voice. It’s an album that’s viscerally human, earnestly sensual and passionately transcending, drawing inspiration from Sarah Davachi, Hildegard von Bingen, Maryanne Amacher and Lhasa de Sela.