- Jing is a storyteller who explores narratives with sound and text. Writing and language play a pivotal role in her practice, which includes short fiction and poetry alongside music. She's also a performance artist and DJ. Adularescence is her first significant release, a mini-album's worth of abstract compositions, half of which feature spoken word. It curiously arrives on Steve Bicknell's 6 Dimensions label, which until now has specialised in trippy techno. Adularescence is definitely not a club record, but it is a complex and arresting expression.
Adularescence consists of a short story—published in full on the sleeve—and 12 compositions. The music relates to the story and works as a continuous piece, best listened to all at once. It also functions on a track-by-track basis. Zoomed in like this you can appreciate the striking sound design on tracks like "Amalgam," which rattles with a tactile resonance, and the jarring "Yet To Begin," which provides a lasting jolt to finish. Some of the compositions are incredibly cinematic. Take "She's A Peeler," which swirls gongs and synths into a nightmarish vortex that could soundtrack a frantic scene in a film noir. The fragments of poetry are graphic, too. "3mm" considers flesh as a currency, while the "filthy smell of decaying flesh and blood" haunts the narrator in "Sheded." Adularescence alludes to something horrific, a bigger picture that is never fully revealed.
TracklistA1 Door
A2 She's A Peeler
A3 3mm
A4 Amalgam
A5 Permission
A6 Go
B1 I Don't Think I Should Shout
B2 Meaning Of Pupil
B3 Sheded
B4 It Used To Be A Dream Of Mine
B5 The Dilemma Of A Sinner
B6 Yet To Begin