the voice pulled from cover and left to drown

The remix that isolates Linda McCartney's backup track and pushes it to solo becomes Gately's image of a voice with nowhere to be received: shaky, off-key, audibly wanting to disappear back inside the pro sound that used to cover it, singing into a mix that gives it no place. He calls it "sadistic," and the cruelty he names is the exposure — a small unheard voice dragged out of its hiding place and made to stand alone in noise, communicating only its own wish not to be heard.