"Dear, can I call you dear / When I see the land change in your eyes? / The color, the song, your kiss goodbye..."
The beautiful drama of "Balmaha" from Laura Loriga's fourth album, "Vever" feels so densely packed full of sounds. And like an attic trunk full of past memories, photos, trinkets of other times there is a lot to unpack here. For me the over-riding emotional edges, soft and razor sharp is Loriga's darkly dreamy songwriting and truly compelling vocal aesthetic. Her story here, realized with vocal lines that feel like they have soft barbs on the ends that hook you in further feel just vague enough to mesmerize, "Dear, can I call you dear / When I see the land change in your eyes? / The color, the song, your kiss goodbye..." and cajole.
I love the unsteady haunting sense, the kind of horror pop distorted synths, the utterly cool drum work (by Otto Hauser) and Stefano Michelotti's pearly amazing electric guitar work. There are other sounds, all of them really, that I could pull apart and talk about but it is just better to hear them. As a songwriter and composer Loriga, who was born in Bologna, Italy (and has been creating there and out of Brooklyn New York) is not content to produce easily digested pop tunes but, instead, seems to carefully craft emotional and sonic ID dreams that veer into dissonant places. I couldn't help but think of surreal, beautifully odd works of art hanging up on museum walls.
While this is not an album review, I can tell you emphatically that "Vever" is an amazing piece of such art.
-Robb Donker Curtius
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THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://open.spotify.com/track/0Uo5N6olMW0SJsZdECEuem
https://music.apple.com/us/album/balmaha-feat-ofir-ganon-josh-werner/1621603886?i=1621603889
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVEfLbl4D34
https://lauraloriga.bandcamp.com
Singer-songwriter and composer Laura Loriga was born in Bologna, Italy, and in the past decade she has been developing her work between her own country and the United States. With Mimes of Wine, her main project until recently, she has written and published three full-length records (Apocalypse sets in - Midfinger Records/Warner Chappell, 2009, Memories for the unseen - Urtovox Records, 2012 and La maison verte - Urtovox Records - ITA/Accidental Muzik - US, 2016), receiving high praise from the music press (Rolling Stone, Blow Up, Il Mucchio) and collaborating closely with her band both in the studio and in live performance.
Laura has lived in Los Angeles and then in New York, and both cities, together with Italy, have created a superimposition of influences that have led her writing to develop in a personal direction. From more abstract and classically infused atmospheres, she has gradually moved towards a kind of increased simplicity and rawness, complemented by an ongoing research in her sound palette, currently based on organs as opposed to the acoustic piano she started writing on. Her music is variegated and enriched by an array of acoustic and electric elements (among which drones, nyckelharpa, harmonium), a series of darker ballads sometimes far from song form but invariably led by her rare and striking voice, a compelling force across all the landscapes through which it moves.
At present, Laura has just finished producing a fourth album, Vever, written in New York between 2018 and 2020, and featuring the collaboration of a series of musicians among whom Josh Werner (Marc Ribot, Coco Rosie), Otto Hauser (Espers, Vashti Bunyan), Anni Rossi and Janis Brenner (Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble). The record will be released by Ears&Eyes Records in February 2022.
Over the years, Laura has also collaborated with various other artists, including songwriter Jaye Bartell, producer Adam Moseley and band Giardini di Mirò. She has also been active in film music, contributing to the soundtracks of a number of films and documentaries. Among these are Shelter, Farewell to Heaven and Lucus a Lucendo (both by Caucaso Films).
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM - PRESS NOTES:
https://open.spotify.com/track/0Uo5N6olMW0SJsZdECEuem
https://music.apple.com/us/album/balmaha-feat-ofir-ganon-josh-werner/1621603886?i=1621603889
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVEfLbl4D34
https://lauraloriga.bandcamp.com
Singer-songwriter and composer Laura Loriga was born in Bologna, Italy, and in the past decade she has been developing her work between her own country and the United States. With Mimes of Wine, her main project until recently, she has written and published three full-length records (Apocalypse sets in - Midfinger Records/Warner Chappell, 2009, Memories for the unseen - Urtovox Records, 2012 and La maison verte - Urtovox Records - ITA/Accidental Muzik - US, 2016), receiving high praise from the music press (Rolling Stone, Blow Up, Il Mucchio) and collaborating closely with her band both in the studio and in live performance.
Laura has lived in Los Angeles and then in New York, and both cities, together with Italy, have created a superimposition of influences that have led her writing to develop in a personal direction. From more abstract and classically infused atmospheres, she has gradually moved towards a kind of increased simplicity and rawness, complemented by an ongoing research in her sound palette, currently based on organs as opposed to the acoustic piano she started writing on. Her music is variegated and enriched by an array of acoustic and electric elements (among which drones, nyckelharpa, harmonium), a series of darker ballads sometimes far from song form but invariably led by her rare and striking voice, a compelling force across all the landscapes through which it moves.
At present, Laura has just finished producing a fourth album, Vever, written in New York between 2018 and 2020, and featuring the collaboration of a series of musicians among whom Josh Werner (Marc Ribot, Coco Rosie), Otto Hauser (Espers, Vashti Bunyan), Anni Rossi and Janis Brenner (Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble). The record will be released by Ears&Eyes Records in February 2022.
Over the years, Laura has also collaborated with various other artists, including songwriter Jaye Bartell, producer Adam Moseley and band Giardini di Mirò. She has also been active in film music, contributing to the soundtracks of a number of films and documentaries. Among these are Shelter, Farewell to Heaven and Lucus a Lucendo (both by Caucaso Films).
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Laura Loriga, singer-songwriter, composer, producer, musician, Italy, New York, new album "Vever", evocative voice, avant pop, surreal, indie rock, alternative music, "Balmaha", divergent art,
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