Megafortress: Megafortress (Software)

An EP consisting almost entirely of human voice and vocoder effects sounds like a dubious proposition — like Imogen Heap’s “O.C.” anthem blown out across four tracks. “My Favorite Girl” is anything but that… Bill Gillim’s voice flutters and wavers in and out of earshot, treated with effects and operating almost exclusively as the arrangement. Synth touches help flesh it out a bit, but it’s that trembling, staccato falsetto that really is driving the ship. “Consolamentum” is more meditative, with a sensibility that feels like Stars of the Lid played back at twice the normal speed, less glacial but no less elegiac. On “Green Child,” his voice is again in a falsetto, but clearer than ever, with bells and concrete sounds sprinkled throughout the mix; it’s perhaps the most immediate of the vocal pieces here, feeling the most like a proper song. But I’m more prone to zero in on “We Love You,” which is the droniest of them all. Gillim’s voice is again the focal point, but it’s diffused and looped into drones here, shifting from sweet and human to something weirder and more affected. The press release seems to somewhat write this closing track off, but the majesty of that closing track’s airy cloud of sound seems to be the essence of what Gillim was going for here, meditations on the human voice and the places it may transport you.

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