From the sketchy twitch-pop stylings of opener and scatty intro of sorts Infinite Love Without Fulfilment, Boucher demonstrates a previously inconceivable ability to harness great muscle and movement within a restrictive timeframe, layering vocal loops over slurry-like squelches of synth pulsation over scrappy drum machine pitter-patter, her restless agitation and wild dreams sensationally fulfilled almost instantaneously. The Asiatic swoon of Genesis follows and, from here on, you're left dumbfounded, a jaw smattered with shattered calcium strewn around shoes like blue and white wares scotched and strewn across soiled flowerbed. For Visions is a feat as phenomenal as the reality that Boucher may contain such musical ingenuity within one solitary mind without the thing short-circuiting or that she may channel such energy from one sole body without inducing some form of self-implosion.
Buoyant synth undulations bob joyously to processed vocal ebbs on the quietly spectacular alt.pop constructions of Oblivion, colliding with Boucher's otherworldly yodel and a creeping sense of menace that gradually crescendos as it fades to an eerie silence. Indeed it's the sort of sly disconcerting that compatriots Crystal Castles once mastered and subsequently milked as the Ontarian pairing rendered omnipresent the emblazonment of their idiosyncratic blind Madonna and one may advocate that polychromatic mutilation of the hair may now wriggle free from the innate constraints of Arbutus Records and Camden Town following on from the inevitable prosperity engendered by these thirteen divine Visions. Her inspirational capacity to seamlessly weave together a veritable smorgasbord of glitches, electronic flecks, and mellifluous percussion to produce a meticulous pop mesh within an impeccable mélange reemerges on the blissed-out rapture of Vowels = Space And Time which, coincidentally, recalls Celestica were it remodelled by a Queen of Pop spacked up on MDNA. However while many of Boucher's (con)temporaries have ultimately lost themselves within a Labyrinthian maze of discordance (see any which progenitor of the now-derided faux pas of a genre that is, or rather was, 'witch house') she retains a precise focus throughout and, although chameleonic, paints herself as the prismatic Madonna of the iEra we contemporaneously inhabit. Be A Body is unadulterated, under-the-influence euphoria that comforts like a cocoon of sheer, tangible elation whilst her vocals are warped à la Ciccone circa American Life on pulsating fourth Eight as they're shifted to the hamster-like pitch to have maimed Roger Miller's Whistle-Stop and splayed out over industrial disco thump.
And yet despite blazing her own irradiate trail through 2012 and beyond, Boucher may be aligned with others out there in that in accordance with myriad (con)temporary records Visions assimilates a vague mixtape aesthetic in its wild, entirely unpredictable, and ultimately invigorating hot potato-like hurling of genres: Circumambient is hacked, slashed, cut and pasted into an unabashed anthem and if it may be considered the Girls Just Want to Have Fun of the 2010s it certainly demonstrates that this one's relishing every breath inhaled in this technology-infused age, while the unearthly balladry of Skin recalls oft-cited influence Enya were she to front the more sedate minutes of Silent Shout. Elsewhere, just as HEALTH came to prominence after Kath and Glass bloodthirstily bit gory hunks out of Crimewave you can but hope Colour Of Moonlight (Antiochus) has a similarly propulsive effect for Doldrums as he features on its muggy R'n'B-cum-'80s electropop flump. Devon Welsh, masquerading as Majical Cloudz and purportedly making out with she in question, also chips in as he crops up on the insistent rumble of Nightmusic: like BRAIDS' Lemonade intertwined with a salacious mugginess in the dankest corner of some grubby strip joint, it's a subtle highlight that builds in stature with every play prior to concluding in a squall of post-classical apocalyptica.
Boucher may be the very antithesis of an airbrushed, rosy-cheeked covergirl yet in times of technological revolution and attention spans shorter than most fuses to slither into all manner of explosives, that's precisely where Boucher can be found. And so she belongs for contemporarily, Boucher epitomises ultimate Vogue.
