Wide Awake Open by Mathilde Nobel

For fans of Björk, Me Lost Me, Lingua Ignota, trip hop, and coming down off who knows what in the pews of a cathedral, Wide Awake Open by Mathilde Nobel brings the oversaturated aesthetics of rave culture to an unlikely application of deep spiritual practice. An intimately emotive voice invites us into the composition, only occasionally forming into words while communicating an intuitively familiar sense of religious ecstasy. Where we may expect to see this spiritual euphoria joined by familiar instruments like organs or anything we may typically find an orchestra, Nobel instead harvests instrumental intensity from the dynamic power of electronic dance music, pulling elements like twangy lead synths, dramatically swooping drops, and enormously prominent percussion to meet the existing feverish emotional energy. We’re typically trained to think that these moments when we come closest to the divine ought to occur in some sort of ritualized, traditional space, but the dissociation afforded by the sensual maximalism of a rave provides many of the same opportunities, inducing a sensation in the subconscious best described by sounds like Wide Awake Open.