Olivia Louvel is a French-born British composer and artist whose work draws on voice, computer music, and digital narrative- she has been recording work since around 2005. Her sonic output sits between creation and documentation, often taking existing texts, autobiographical documents, or poetry as a starting point for work. Her work is built around the exploration of the voice, sung or spoken, and its manipulation through digital technology, as a compositional method. For this album she utilizes The Sculptor Speaks- a 1961 self-recording of Barbara Heyworth’s voice, finding her discussing how she creates art and her options/ philosophy on various topics. The tape was originally recorded talk with slides for the British Council.

The CD features nine tracks in all- taking in a total of thirty-four minutes in all. Each of the tracks runs between three and just over four minutes- the sound through-out is fairly sparse & stripped, though on the odd occasion we do get a pile-up of more glitch bound noise fare- though things never go too far into this side of things. Each of the tracks finds Louvel either selecting a short repeated phrase or more philosophy chatter from Hepworth. Around these she occasionally places sing-song type vocalizing- I’m not sure if these elements are harmonically modified recordings of Hepworth's voice, or Louvel her self. Even though the whole release is stripped back, Louvel managers to makes the tracks fairly varied- though with a certain thematic feel running through-out.

SculptOr [Hepworth Resounds] sits pleasantly between more experimental glitch-bound electronica & worthy spoken word manipulation- making for a release that lightly challengers & intrigues in equal measures.