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It's long been said that Southerners perceive time differently, that because the industrial clock never crept below the Mason-Dixon Line, time down there is less regimented, more relaxed. This could explain the delicious blend of electronic ambient music and drifting pastoralism unique to Rachel Evans's Motion Sickness of Time Travel project. In the last three years, the (rural) Georgia artist has peeled off a string of limited cassettes and vinyl records, becoming one of experimental drone's best-kept secrets in the process. Yet no previous title (not even the excellent Luminaries & Synastry from last year) can prepare listeners for the Kosmische-stained grandeur of her new double LP off the Spectrum Spools label. Talk about epic: over the course of its four extended compositions, she constructs a sprawl of lamenting melodies and synth-generated arpeggios that is delicately enveloped by all manner of multi-dimensional reverb and stereo manipulation. The music's compass — but not always its primary focus — is Evans's church-trained voice. On "One Perfect Moment," as well as the reflective "Summer of the Cat's Eye," the singer proves just how adept she's become at retaining that voice's bodily weight while sounding celestial and free of gravity. It's a refined sense of balance that sets her apart from Grouper and Julia Holter, artists to whom Evans is too often compared.
