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In 2015, Ouri, an electronic producer born in France and living in Montreal, Canada, was an enigmatic figure in experimental music. Her sound felt equally overcast and vibrant, a pitch-black mix of haunting synths and pulsating drums meant solely for late-night listening. On the surface, one could call it dance music, but there was something surreal and alien about it. Surely, you could move to songs like “Virgins,” “Carae” and “Maze,” but the glitches and offbeat ticks suggested allegiance to Montreal’s underground rave scene. Along the way, she’s honed her skills through Red Bull Music Academy’s Montreal Bass Camp, toured with fellow experimental musicians Yves Tumor and Jacques Greene, and headlined various showcases — all while releasing a handful of singles and short albums. Over the past six years, Ouri has broadened her art by breaking it down, trading the drum loops for a deconstructed sound intended for the neck up.
For her debut full-length album, Frame of a Fauna, she opts for an ambitious blend of vocal loops, machinelike percussion, orchestral strings and hypnotic drone, merging disparate noise into an amorphous 48-minute set. Across the LP, Ouri’s voice is hidden behind massive waves of sound, giving her an otherworldly presence, as if she’s singing from another realm. While it’s tough to decipher what’s being said, the words aren’t supposed to overpower the melody. They’re pushed to the background on purpose, lending to the album’s airy tenor. In press materials, Ouri says Frame examines how emotional hardship can deform human skeletons, and how the circle of life imprints the spirit. For instance, she once watched her sister give birth in Berlin, only to visit Brazil a year later to say goodbye to her dying mother. The album finds Ouri wrestling with her place in the world, and she hopes it “provides a soundtrack to reflect your own shapes and space in this lifetime.”
Indeed, Frame is full of emotive moments conveying some sort of longing. Like “The More I Feel,” which is carried by a sparse piano loop that lands wistfully on the ear. Close your eyes and you can almost see Ouri leafing through an old picture book, eagerly trying to make sense of her family history. The same goes for “Fonction Naturelle,” where Ouri loops the harp over a stuttering drum beat, giving the track a celestial and futuristic aura. It’s the kind of ghostly sound that the singer and producer James Blake popularized in the 2010s, but Ouri’s version feels influenced by ‘80s and ‘90s house music. On the songs “Wrong Breed” and “Chains,” the drums thud like they’re pounding the walls at a rave. Conversely, the tracks “En Mon Doux Sein” and “Shape of It” are loosely arranged cello, harp and piano that just sort of hang in the balance, as if suspended in air. It all leads to what I think is the album’s showstopper: “Grip,” a downtempo track with slow-grinding drums that feel like they’ve been run through a compactor. Given its pace and sultry mood, one would think she’s singing of bodies in motion. Instead, she seems to unpack being stuck in flesh, a hindrance to the freedom she craves. Of course, that’s just my reading of the track. In Ouri’s world, where dreams and reality intertwine, maintaining the mystery is key.
