Ultraísta - Ultraísta

By: Joel Frieders

I'm a sucking fucker for female vocals that don't bug the shit out of me after a few spins. I'm also a sucker for imagining what these fifis look like while singing. Sometimes I picture a chick ovary-deep in her own sadness, rocking back and forth with her knees to her chin. Once in a while I'll imagine a chick who's really into scat singing, but thankfully she doesn't scat sing because it's fucking annoying as fucking Fuck, but she has a noticable lisp as a result of a gum infection she caught on a trip to Guatemala in her early twenties. Sometimes it's an elegant dame made completely out of macaroni and cheese. And then sometimes there's that voice that kicks me in the grundle so quickly, all I can do is wait for the image to develop in my skull after repeated listens.

I've been listening to Ultraísta quite a bit these past few days, and I think I know what I imagine the throat in this band sounds like now.

Being fed from the electronica feeder bar under the grey, moist overcast of anywhere-metropolis-UK, Laura Bettinson strikes me throughout the entire self-titled album from Ultraísta as being that chick wearing the bright white hoodie leisurely strolling agasint the throng through a thicket of black umbrellas and grey overcoats. Under her hoodie she's rocking huge ass motherfucking pink headphones and she's completely immune to the swarm of drab around her, as she sings to herself. She's not just singing to herself, she's fucking JAMMING to herself.

Throughout the album, Laura's work on Ultraísta might be misunderstood as reserved. Most of the time her voice never peaks over a fever of conversational vocals spoken, and while it seems more therapeutic to her than anyone else listening, it's that sense of no one else cares that makes her voice so goddamn fucking beautiful. Effortless might be an adjective one could use, and it would fit, but what Ultraísta has in a vocal like Laura Bettinson's is a soft, pillow-like stream of pure gorgeousness that pulls more from the cute pile than the pile labeled immediately striking.

Ultraísta sounds like a downtempo electronica version of really fucking comfortable sweatpants. The pair you wear for days in a row, and do laundry just to fucking have them accessible. The pair you might actually consider wearing out of the house if the need arose. The pair you won't even wipe bodily fluids on bro. The good ones bro.

The only difference between this fucking band and the sweatpants Laura's voice reminds me of is that I am seriously fucking turned on by her throat, and I won't even touch my penis while wearing these sweatpants. It's too risky. If I stain these muthafuckers permanently I'll be fucking livid bro bro.

Ultraísta have cupped me in the perfect place for cupping, and I'm damn sure it's the vocal I'm cupped nuts for. With beats that progress like a night club inside space mountain, and a completely non-annoying La Roux meets the chick from Zero 7 set of female pipes, this album is rainy day perfuckingfection.

The tracks You're Out and Wash It Over might seriously be two of my favorite tracks of 2012.