“APOLAKI: OPERA OF THE SCORCHED EARTH” HONORS AND ACKNOWLEDGES ANCESTORS
—Rebeca Lee; LA Dance Chronicle; July 2023
“…the soundscape that Tobin composed and performed created a hauntingly spiritual tone.’
Florilegio Interview
“Though much of Tobin’s work is fueled by being a Filipina American woman in a predominantly Eurocentric industry, BAKUNAWA felt wholly like the work of hers and her own lineage. It is a statement in taking back her agency and a lesson in how to stop seeking permission in existing institutions.”
“White Boy Scream’s vocal incantations can oscillate from soul-wrenching to seductive in a single phrase, bringing new realities into being through her highly intentional utterances.”
—Mark Frosty; Modern Composition LA for Dublab; October 2020
The Wire Magazine; Joshua Minsoo Kim; July 2020
“…she wields her voice and her instruments as both tools and weapons…”
—Joshua Minsoo Kim; The Wire Magazine
“Not only is the album conceptually thick and rich… but it is also captivating in its elegant songcraft and searing in its hot blushes of spectrum peaking noise.”
—Mick; ThaSoundBlog; November 2020
Best of Bandcamp Contemporary Classical: Peter Margasak;
June 2020
“…Bakunawa is a dense web of mish-mashed traditions; it’s a reclamation of a western classical practice, an interleaving of Filipino mythology, a post-industrial blast of noise, and a heartfelt burst of energy from an artist continuing to explore and unschackle her abilities.”
“…the shocking experimental aesthetics of Micaela Tobin (White Boy Scream), reaching this year a powerful synthesis of her eclectic sound art with the ambitious Bakunawa”…which is also home to a transgenerational trauma that finds its outlet in a brutal mix of harsh noise and pained lyricism both popular and operatic.”
“…Tobin’s solemn song…evoke[s] the late romanticism of the twentieth-century Second Viennese School.”
“…short-wave drones à la Éliane Radigue are crossed by the artist’s refracted and evanescent echo, whose intoning of the words “They can’t erase me” opens the doors to a most thundering and ashen analog noise – somewhere between Kevin Drumm’s Inferno and the filtered microphones of Pharmakon and Lingua Ignota.”
“…Bakunawa is destined to be talked about for its ability to make abstraction concrete, to let atrocity and grace coexist into a sound manifesto that seems to spontaneously arise from the conflicts, internal and external, of our turbulent present.”
"There is a stark duality at the heart of Micaela Tobin’s work as White Boy Scream. On one hand, the Los Angeles based artist and vocal coach possesses a clear, resonant voice that’s opera level; on the other, her subterranean sinkhole noise is its own potent reward.”
“…2013’s Urge felt like dimly remembered nightmare shot through with flashes of drowsy pop R&B.”
“…2015’s gnashing Hustle Divine was gloomier, at least its maggot-saturated storm clouds could yield gloriously to Tobin’s klieg light vocal – the profane obliterated by the sacred.”
“Remains…is the best synthesis yet of her talents. Here, grief acts as compass and centering force...you’re under her thrall for every wracked, wrenching sob and deep-fried tone to come.”
“Thou” suggests an ancient crackly LP featuring a soloist humming the prelude to a powerful hymn – except that the record player rests on a box of gunpowder that happens to be on fire. “Love Song II” wields its symbolism with a devastated bluntness: distortion smothering toy piano plinks in imitation of the body’s physical burial, a harried montage of vocals simulating the emotional collapse of mourning. Indeed, it is impossible to experience this record without feeling Tobin’s profound sense of loss.”
“But Remains adds extra meaning to its title by winding down the anguished “Come” with 90 seconds of a song written by the departed: a vital gothic burst of guitar rock ’n’ roll that blares crudely, fading out of earshot too soon."
—The Wire Magazine 2018 Rewind;
Raymond Cummings; 2018
“On Remains, the operatic howls of White Boy Scream reasserts the voice as a site of embodied power.”
—The Wire Magazine (Top 10 list of the best industrial/noise albums of 2018);Emily Pothast; 2018
“…truly extreme, dynamic
music.”
"...the project WHITE BOY SCREAM a.k.a. M. Tobin (one of few female voices in all this drone/industrial escapism) discomfort is not only a side-effect, but actually the desired result of listening in – for after the discomfort comes the calm respite of all the wandering."
—Katherine Humphreys, KEXP
"LA-via-Seattle musician White Boy Scream (Micaela Tobin) combines drone tapestries with treated operatic vocals to generate unnerving pieces that accrue a fearsome intensity the longer they go."
"As White Boy Scream, Micaela Tobin's gorgeous, classically trained opera voice mutates into Auto-Tuned Satan, with hiccuping, reverberating synths beneath."
"White Boy Scream is a memorable name for a solo project (especially one by a woman—Micaela Tobin of Thousand Statues), and this Seattle musician's cryptic musique concrete–ish pieces, augmented by electronically warped chants, cast an unsettling spell, like a less drama-queeny Diamanda Galás"