ML Buch’s Glistening Sound Bath Heals Brooklyn
The experimental-pop musician’s live show was a merciful reminder to slow the hell down.
Serene to the point of holiness, ML Buch’s music both interrogates and sanctifies our uncanny present: When humanity itself is being probed to find out what makes us different from the computers; when communing with nature can mean looking at a subway ad touting the beauty of Upstate New York; when our souls are becoming untethered from our bodies, our flesh picked apart under the cell phone glow.
However dystopian all that may sound, the Danish songwriter, composer, and producer is not exactly a doomsayer. Her patient work, which deconstructs the slick sounds of 1980s stalwarts like the Police and Dire Straits, soothes as it takes stock of where we’re at as a species. Her two albums so far, 2020’s Skinned and last year’s Suntub, earn their place in the modern uneasy-listening canon, with Buch singing about fleshless hands and baskets of muscle and rays of sun igniting an endless ocean atop soundscapes that can’t seem to fully decide if they want to be unsettling or wondrous. Seeing her perform last night helped clarify her intent.
