Poison conjures up an image of a stark, white room in a futuristic hospital; in which, on a white cuboid table, Gigi Edgley reclines and is inspected as alien by the bespectacled, plummy-voiced retro-sci-fi staff, much to her amusement.
The first minute is dominated by this staff's mostly-impenetrable dialogue, textured with Gigi's breaths and the throbbing hums of background machinery. This use of quaint spoken voice samples is quite reminiscent of Just Give 'em Whiskey.
After a minute this gives way to the actual song; its backbone is an almost ambient, liquid combination of hi-hat, synth, bass, a funk-infused pseudo-guitar line, some eerie whistling, and miscellaneous blips, whirs, breaths and distortion, all of which wouldn't sound out of place in The X-Files.
Gigi's vocals are breathy and sensual; their layering is æthereal and eludes to a fantastical dislocation from reality, with an accompanying inquisitiveness. The instrumentation – especially the mutedness of the grunge-guitar towards the end – reinforces this.
By the time the voices re-emerge four minutes in, the whole thing is sounding very much like a drug-induced altered state of conciousness, and eventually descends into catatonic incoherence.
Yeah, her out of Farscape. If you download one track this week, make it Poison. Stay tuned.