Laura Cocks plays the flute with a visceral physicality that is apparent even when it is just coming out of your speakers. Having seen live performances, the instrument is an extension of their body – a sound-making appendage that expresses the feelings and intent of their whole being.
An album of solo works, FATHM is Cocks at the most unfiltered. The nature and history of the flute are unasked as each track employs a slightly different sound palette or expressive style. This includes unabashed breathiness, mouth and throat noises, squeaking and warbling, multiphonic passages, and even tortured “singing” in unusual vocalizations. The pieces are jagged and loosely structured, with an emphasis on form, tone, and structure rather than familiar notions of melody and rhythm.
The album is not just a rethinking of the flute and goes beyond the strange and otherworldly. Instead, it is better thought of as a detonation of expected timbres, with Cocks wielding the instrument as a shape-shifting channel for breath, grit, and distortion. These metallic echoes and fluttering apparitions are disoriented yet oddly compelling – a charismatic stranger who speaks in riddles, their voice shifting between a whisper and a roar, always pulling you closer. But Cocks’ flute doesn’t introduce itself politely – it crackles and gasps, darting unpredictably between moments of frenetic energy and eerie stillness. One can only have a similar experience when listening to their previous solo album, field anatomies.
As the avant-garde goes, this album is out there, but it also represents an openness and integrity. Cocks is an explorer who does not hold back. Put another way, if you like the idea of hearing sounds that you can barely imagine coming from an instrument that dates back thousands of years, FATHM is a no brainer.
The album will be co-released on February 21, 2025 by Relative Pitch and Out Of Your Head.
