sonified physiological indicators of empathy
“Kutler’s music is subdued and perilous, bolstered by fragments of prepared piano and vocals. The project’s search for empathy is a captivating story and the music doesn’t feel heavy-handed. Each piece finds steady, subtle drones and icy melodic fragments, hanging in a constant stream of delicate tension.” - Vanessa Ague, The Wire (Issue 445) (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)
“If ever a recording benefited from playback via headphones or an immersive surround-sound environment, Kutler's definitely qualifies. The settings are ultra-dense soundscapes within which blurry textures abound and unearthly vocals and instrument timbres drift. In the opening “Feasible,” cavernous rumblings emerge alongside steely, organ-like tones, the latter perhaps the result of stretched-out piano voicings and the whole somehow managing to suggest ties to both dark ambient at its most macabre and Baroque music.” - Ron Schepper, Textura (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)
“The pieces using voices as the source can be twisted and haunting. But for the most part, Kutler’s processed audio does not directly represent the jarring feelings of anxiety and fear that the subjects no doubt experienced. Instead, she has transformed them into an otherworldly combination of beauty and dread.” - Mike Borella, Avant Music News (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)
“It is an exquisitely fraught listen. Allure and unease press into each other. Flocks of pizzicato burst from gentle feedback tones; the quivers of audio time-stretching protrude like goosebumps upon arcs of melody; a choir of children wobbles between harmonic parallel and pulsing misalignment.” - Jack Chuter, Attn Magazine (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)
“The combination of droning materials and harmonic implications throughout these six tracks makes them attractive also from a purely aesthetic point of view. Still, even if this music may appear assimilable with a degree of ease, it hardly smiles. Kutler’s transparent eyes hint at intelligence and depth; her investigations of uncomfortable aspects of perception definitely substantiate our impression, now twice in a row.” - Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes (Sonified Physiological Indicators of Empathy, 2021)
disembodied
“Jen Kutler’s on the cutting edge of electronic experimentalism in a way that intersects sexuality and humanity in the center of a surprising Venn diagram that, quite frankly, is interesting and brave and riveting to listen to.” - Ryan Masteller, Tabs Out (Disembodied, 2019)
“The music is steeped in thought, debate, philosophy and science. It is an academic endeavor but the music never sounds like that. It is full of emotion and meaning. Kutler has taken one of the biggest emotional events we can experience as humans, turned that into something cold and scientific and then transformed it again into a work of feeling and art.” - Samuel Goff, Tone Shift (Disembodied, 2019)
“One of the strangest releases of the year, and one of the most relevant.” -Richard Allen, A Closer Listen (Disembodied, 2019)
“…this may be one of the most fascinating electronic music releases this year. It’s not just about the music, which is satisfying enough in itself, but it’s also all about perspective and, possibly, your own sexual preconceptions.” - Peter van Cooten, Ambient Blog (Disembodied, 2019)
“Kutler’s “Disembodied” isn’t about sensory emulation. Each track is a multiply-mediated abstraction of an individual’s singular experience. Small, perhaps, but also somehow a universe unto itself. There is no pattern, no stereotypical form, no pandering to expectations. Those limitations are nowhere to be found or felt here, and that reflects a level of liberty that is almost never reached, despite all the artists who may try.” - Shaawano Chad Uran (Disembodied, 2019)
“Beyond Kutler’s exploratory capacities, already worthy of interest in themselves due to the total lack of clichés linked to pseudo-feminist obsolescence, it’s good to enjoy such a beautifully resounding album – whose aim is discovering “the amount of separation required to de-objectify a feminine spectrum body” – as the fruit of acts that religions describe as “sinful”, whereas they express instead a deep level of purity, connected to otherwise inexpressible intimate realities.” - Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes (Disembodied, 2019)
“This release is not something to be missed, it is a one-of-a-kind journey. It is something totally new that we are lucky to be able to experience.” - TD, Yeah I Know It Sucks (Disembodied, 2019)
live performance
“…synthesizing the philosophical and emotional with the musical and technological — Jen Kutler reveals herself to be an artist very much of the moment.” - Dan Joseph, Music Works #136, Spring 2020
“Kutler’s performance has all the force of a great rock statement, all the roil and ecstasy, but it pursues it without the familiar, orienting substrata of rhythm or melody.” - Marc Weidenbaum, Disquiet