Have you ever wondered what it might be like to drive your car on the streets of another planet? Going for a drive on a less-traveled path is a way to hurtle yourself into something new, and there you would’ve chosen the real unknown. Like any other day, you’d sit at the steering wheel and stare out at the world in front of you, but it would look so different: the colors would be warped, the landscape would be full of rocks you’ve never seen, there might be some previously unimaginable life form. This is the kind of extraterrestrial terrain Samara Lubelski conjures on V1/V2, a violin record that reshapes the instrument’s woody textures into otherworldly electricity. It’s an album of eerie breezes and strung-out screeches, shimmers that reach us from lightyears away. But most of all, Lubelski takes the instrument and drives it down the back roads as a means of meditating on the violin’s endless possibilities.
This isn’t a completely new idea for Lubelski, whose work has always found unexpected places and also spans several musical realms. The New York-based multi-instrumentalist has played in the goth band Of A Mesh, with indie rock bands like The Sonora Pine, and in many improvisatory settings, including her duo project with guitarist Bill Nace that explores the droning, ecstatic, and massive sound of her instrument. Other recent solo work, like 2020’s Partial Infinite Sequence, has zoomed in on the minutiae of each note. With V1/V2, she comes from the same texturally focused perspective, but sculpts something more amorphous, metallic, and futuristic.
Much of the album feels mysterious and amorphous, but at its root are several clearly articulated phrases. Both pieces explore the same palette of stacked violin tremolos and oscillating waves, blending razor-sharp slashes with brittle, echoing tremolos. The music moves in oscillating waves, entering at hyper speed and then receding back into a trot. Her dynamics, too, shift with the drag of her bow, sprinting from piercing forte back down to a hushed piano. The effect is that of instability and change, of constant evolution.
While both tracks are quite similar, which can become monotonous, “V2” offers the most dynamic version of Lubelski’s vision. Here, ghostly tremolos seamlessly blend into shockwave-like winds, and the dichotomy of piercing phrases and hazy clouds feels its strongest. It’s also more divergent, in that it embraces both the tension of the music’s eeriness and its release. By the end of the track, there’s a deep exhale accompanied by a final letting go. It’s as if the instrument has landed back on Earth, ready to tell the story of where it went.
But before landing back on home turf, let’s go back to outer space for a second. The violin itself is something so familiar — an instrument with centuries of history and tradition(s) from which to draw. Lubelski still plays the tremolos but turns them into alien transmissions. Her instrument often sounds nothing like a violin, save for the sound of horse hair and rosin against metal string. It’s true: There’s always something left to discover, on Earth and beyond.