The other night, I noticed muffled sounds/voices coming from somewhere in my house. Only vaguely threatened, I first assumed the guy upstairs, normally gone for weeks at a time (this is a whole other mystery), had simply returned home or that someone was working outside. Then remembering that the windows were closed and realizing that the guy upstairs was not home, I began to search for the source of the sound until I realized the stereo receiver was picking up radio signals, a low ghostly murmur coming through the speakers. The effect was haunting, and reminiscent of Jean Cocteau's classic movie, Orpheus, where the the car radio broadcasts abstract messages from the afterlife. In both of these cases, the radio signals, faintly picked up by stereos, becomes a ghostly presence, suggesting a space between life and death.

I bring up these two instances to introduce this week's Album of the Week by Sparklebomb, the alias of Angie Conte, a Buffalo based electronic musician who has just released her debut cassette EP, Funeral Beats on Prime Ruin. Sparklebomb has crafted a series of pieces around tape and synth loops that, combined with the interspersed phone recordings of a now deceased man, explore this liminal terrain, acting as a sort of musical crypt.

The title track is a strong example of Sparklebomb's style, which mixes the found and the original in a way reminiscent of Burial at his more downtempo moments. It is low fi but for very specific reasons as Sparklebomb begins to explore and emphasize the materiality of her instruments, the scratches and muffling anchoring the music and giving it a textural quality that further underscores the life and death of an ultimately marginal figure. Conte had acquired the phone conversations of a now deceased man who seems to have recorded every one of the calls he made to phone sex operators trying to find an outlet for his desires. It is to Conte's credit that she is able to take this premise and use her music to articulate the gentleman's loneliness, leading the listener to be both at times uncomfortable with how raw these recordings are and also acknowledging that this individual was a person just as deserving of achieving his desires as anyone else. The tape becomes a memorial and the choice of sound clips, albeit raw, forces us to confront the damage done to individuals we deem to be outsiders.

For such a short album, Sparklebomb has crafted a strong statement of introduction for her work and its focus. Funeral Beats is quiet collection of affecting and haunting pieces. Its materiality allows it to carve itself a space for its ghosts while also acting as a marker for a life filled with desires, moments of pleasure and feelings of rejection. There is a moment towards the end of "I'm Home," the EP's penultimate track, where Conte's own muffled vocals come through the loops and drumbeats. This moment seems to introduce another specter but the voice's melodic quality signals the entrance of the living, an uncanny moment that firmly positions the record between life and death sharing space with Cocteau's radio poet and the free floating radio signals coming through my stereo receiver. Overall, the EP is a great debut from an artist carving out a unique space for herself. I am excited to see what Sparklebomb does next.

Funeral Beats is available via Prime Ruin.