I usually attempt to restrict my coverage on this blog to releases that have dropped within the calendar year, but I’m going to have make an exception for this one because I’m just so smitten with it. Maybe smitten is the wrong way to put it. Bewildered and delighted? Ok, let’s go with that. Also, Fish Prints reissued the album this year on CD so... Yeah, we're doing this!
Back in 2016, the Boston based, one-man black metal project Cryostasium released an EP titled Project:00, featuring the Japanese vocalist MEIKO. Well, not vocalist exactly, Vocaliod to be more precise. MEIKO is a sound engineering wonder produced roused into existence by the Yamaha Corporation in partnership with Crypton Future Media back in 2004, as part of a digital pop-star project known as Project Daisy.
MEIKO was one of the four original voice models developed for the program. She is commonly depicted as a trim but busty middle-aged woman, with a youthful face, a short brown haired bob-cut, and a tight-fitting, sleeveless red-leather jacket and skirt combo, with exposed lingerie underneath, often depicted as holding a variant of the Sennheiser MD421 microphone. She originally had what was considered a “straight” vocal tone, but later variations modified her voice to give it more character.
Like all Vocaliods, MEIKO is technically a software package that is meant to be slotted into projects where there is not a vocalist, and replicate the sound of a human voice with uncanny accuracy. Because the sound of a Vocaliod (Vocal + Android) so closely mimics the actual sound of a human’s voice, it’s become customary to list the software's product name as a featured artist on tracks, or in the case of Project:00, entire albums, which the software is used on.
With the increased interest of metal idol groups in the United States, specifically Babymetal, and the run-away success of Agretsuko on Netflix, the use of a Vocaloids in heavy metal would seem almost inevitable. Cryostasium’s cyberpunk, atmospheric black metal was obviously a great fit for this style of collaboration and MEIKO’s addition to Project:00 certainly goes a long way towards elevating the project, even beyond either of their usual output (Note: I'm going to be referring to MEIKO as a her from here on out. We have a para-social relationship now. What about it?).
In Cryostasium’s hands MEIKO sounds both more human at times, and far more alien. On opener “Inebriate” Cryostasium lays down a raw and spinney blast-beat and flesh withering tremolo for MEIKO to layer a striking, evocative and patient melody over, that occasionally fires towards the sky in a star blanketing, shrieking falsetto. The way MEIKO emotes on the opener is comfortably human and would not give anyone who did not realize that they were listening to a piece of software, any pause. It’s on the following track, “Downward,” that MEIKO’s otherness and the outlandish qualities of her voice become more apparent. The high notes and variation in modulation quickly outstripping the possible range of human vocal cords, becoming theremin-like, screeching like a piece of seismographic equipment that has just detected a major shift in the earth's crust due to some undulation of a primordial horror in the earth's mantel, and spiraling out into absurd sonic peaks like a PKE meter at a seance.
Raw black
metal and the dirty variety of atmospheric black metal that Cryostasium trades
in are usually eerie enough on their own, but when you add the inhuman frequencies made
possible by an electronic pop idol, something incredibly bizarre and transfixing emerges.
Like your speakers are being haunted by a poltergeist or your soul is being
drawn out through your ears. Is Project:00 the product of it a sacred sonic communion
made in virtual Valhalla, or a deal made with a digital demon at the gates of a Pentium purgatory? I’ll let you know as soon as the processor in my
head-cave stops throwing off sparks.
