Viv Corringham produces a vocal geography that meanders between document, song, conversation and ritual…words and associations that dissolve into breathing, ululating, humming and chanting…Her revoicings produce a sound that neither talks nor sings but conjures and cajoles a landscape from the body.
(The Wire)
The singing by Corringham often reminds me of traditional singing, taken from very different cultures over the planet. Of course the final process was one of mixing the different ingredients into pieces that all move somewhere between music and audioplay, resulting in charming sketches.
(Vital Weekly)
This is a captivating recording, I can’t recommend it enough. (Vuzh Music)
Corringham’s solitary vocal strolls perform a direct confrontation between the language and infrastructure of the city and the more deviant physical responses of a speechless voice.
(The Wire)
She coos, sputters and howls – but also lets fly with some rather beautiful wordless singing, at times sounding like a flock of ghostly doves, at others like a softened Theremin…This album is a gem. Corringham is an experienced and skilful improviser, capable of marshalling all sorts of sounds and vocalisations, from the melodious to the abrasive. But it’s the juxtaposition of the field recordings and Corringham’s improvisations that really differentiates it.
(We Need No Swords)
Viv’s interpretations draw from the core and plumb the depths of each fleeting sound moment. These wordless vocals themselves derive partly from a folky earthiness coupled with a willingness to move from smooth glides right through all the intermediate phases into burring, raspy yelps and squeaks…A singular pleasure.
(The Field Reporter)
Corringham pursues a range of techniques, from cool Brion Gysin-esque wordplay to looped and multilayered operatic wails.
(The Wire)
Corringham's enchanting musical journey…possessed a quality that set the pulses racing.
(The Wire)
Corringham is a wordless vocalist capable of any tone, timbre, sound or scat the human voice can conjure.
(allmusic)
Kate Bush, Dead Can Dance, Lisa Gerrard, Diamanda Galas, Kurt Schwitters, Jack Kerouac, Luciano Berio, Laurie Anderson, Moondog, John Cage, Glenn Gould, Fortunato Depero, Sheila Chandra.
Viv Corringham is all of these and not these.
She deconstructs language with such lightness that her compositions become delicate paintings of everyday life…Her voice resonates with Celtic melancholy while climbing onomatopoeic pathways...Hers is vibrant material: immediate, transparent and poetic.
(Altrevelocita)
Corringham's preoccupation is with voicing the landscape and her project… offers an engaging glimpse of the emotional archaeology of a city.
(Irish Examiner)
Corringham's eerie, echoing mezzo-soprano takes on the force of an inner voice, infusing the spoken words with pungent emotion. The fragments of personal recollections and observations about Kingston become an otherworldly incantation evoking the mysterious power of memory, suggesting the collective traces left by those who've walked the waterfront before us.
(Ulster Publishing's Almanac)
Her range seems limitless, as does her imagination.
(Bebopified)
Ethno-cyberpunk diva. (Her) voice is a thing of wonder, ranging from lilting folkiness to speaking-in-tongues wildness.
(Richard Sanderson - programme notes)
Corringham has an impressive mezzo soprano voice and uses electronic treatments and extended vocal techniques to good effect.
(BBC experimental music website)
Copyright Viv Corringham