Nicole Oberle

Nicole Oberle

Nicole Oberle is a prolific and enigmatic artist whose work in the fields of textural ambient music and lo-fi beat-oriented work unfolds to reveal layers of emotional transparency and honesty. Skin - Oberle’s first release for Whited Sepulchre Records - comes in as a wash of blackened drone, everything riding just a bit above the red, creating an overladen and disorienting rush. Even when Oberle opens up to incorporate birch-bare guitar lines, forlorn piano chords, disembodied vocal drones, fragments of poems and crushing beats, everything is saturated with a palpable sense of foreboding. There is a measurable heaviness imbuing every motion creating this record.

PRESS

BRAINWASHED

A notable aspect of Skin is that Oberle seems like she is being pulled in a number of different stylistic directions at once, which would normally be a real issue for me.  However, she has an uncanny talent for weaving together seemingly disparate threads into an arc that feels organic and unforced.  Very few artists can pull off such a feat.  Aside from that, Oberle shows a real knack for small, unexpectedly poignant touches that give the album a beautifully raw and intimate feel, as Skin is filled with great textures and details like exhalations, lighter clicks, distressed and warbly voice recordings, and the audible starts and stops of a tape machine.

SLUG

Skin’s most striking element in its arch-like structure, with the directness of the music steadily rising and falling across the album’s runtime. The opening “Shipyards” feels worlds away from the more direct material at the album’s center. The title seems to reference the track’s source material, with much of the thick drone resembling the sounds of distorted wind or a distant foghorn. Already, the album’s tangible sense of location shows itself. The track evokes fog on the water at night, a sort of muted contemplation to prepare the listener for the harrowing emotions that succeed this opener.