When one can’t find comfort in the world, it behooves one to create their own. Usually ethereal, or even surreal, vibes are a byproduct of music, but more rarely is it the actual goal. Such is the primary motivation behind Brooklyn experimental-pop artist Sick Din’s ruminations. Sick Din, the musical outlet of Bethany Dinsick, infuses vocally-driven introspection with dance and hip-hop beat samples, as a means of opening portals to leaving the planet. The first notes of her new album, her sixth self-released, entitled Ghost Princess, make you question if what you’re hearing is a language intended for human ears, or if they’re being sung to a more sophisticated level of being in some more sophisticated corner of the universe. Then the beat starts, and it’s as though it’s the vehicle in which you’re to be transported to meet said being.
It’s an album filled with mixed and conflicting emotionality, led as though on a leash, by Dinsick’s voice, and with the mission of introducing an audience to its own potential to feel and discover new selves, as though introspection were a physical, tangible journey to take. She toys with the sensuality of voice, both literally and figuratively, manipulating and experimenting her own vocal samples, as immediately evident on opener “Reaper,” and for the remaining ten tracks. Feeding herself through effect pedals, Sick Din is able to create illusory realms of angelic and mystical multitudes. Warbling variations and duplicated octaves and spacious reverb all serve to envelop the entirety of the room, the world, and displace you in it. The inclusion of the beat samples, gives the album a pulse, fleshes it out, but the complexity of it all, the overwhelming rush of feeling you experience while it moves you, is her beautiful and distorted lyrical delivery. It’s the utmost escapism.
Sick Din will perform a multimedia release show at The Park Church Co-op in Brooklyn on October 28.
