UBOA – The Sky May Be / The Origin of My Depression 2CS

‘The Sky May Be’ and ‘The Origin Of My Depression’ are the most recent full-length recordings by Melbourne’s Uboa, finally available on this double cassette set released by Cipher Productions.

‘The Sky May Be’ is “a work about poverty, sex, anxiety and love”, an overpowering record that slips between dreamy ambience and nightmarish caverns of harsh noise. The record rattles with a sense of instability from start to finish – song structures are freeform and unbound by chorus or verse, harsh elements attack at random yet land perfectly, and it’s rare that any single track can be summed up as solely ambient or noise. The sum of the music is a feeling that pushes sound and mind to its limits, reaping new forms of terror and weakness as the seconds pass by.

‘The Origin Of My Depression’ moves beyond Uboa’s expert ambient and harsh noise craftings to explore elements of shoegaze and found sound, but without ever losing its identity as a craft and highly evocative harsh noise record. theneedledrop describes the release as “a ‘cerebral dive’ into Xandra’s most negative and intense feelings of being a transgender woman… via ‘intense feelings of abandonment… expressed through intense soundscapes… and walls of distortion’, culminating in a wide expanse of styles and soundscapes.

Both releases feature extended artwork. 50 copies packaged in a double-sided cloth and photograph cover, in a ziplock bag.