Julianna Barwick: The Magic Place – review

(Asthmatic Kitty)What Joanna Newsom has done for harp music, Julianna Barwick is doing for the medieval craze of vocal polyphony – with a little help from a bit of gear called a loop station. The Lousiana-born singer's second album is serenely assured, layering her wordless, often a capella sighs into multiple parts. Deconsecrated, yet inescapably churchy, ambient songs such as "White Flag" also recall the elegiac drone of African choirs. For her pains, Barwick has had to endure comparison...

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