Laurel Halo

finally listened to that widely-praised EP from last year, wondering why I hadn't previously

The first couple of tracks off the new King Felix ep are up on Soundcloud:

http://soundcloud.com/liberationtechnologies

kind of a weird deployment of the makoto aida pic but stoked

i kno' nooothin of her previous ep's and stuff, but this "quarantine" collection moves me, grooves me, woos me mo' and mo' with every listen.

Laurel Halo: Quarantine, streaming here: http://soundcloud.com/factmag/laurel-halo-quarantine/s-3eAaW

Looking forward to checking it out, but have to wait until I get home :(

excited!

Couldn't get that stream to work btw, but it plays alright embedded in this page:

http://www.factmag.com/2012/05/15/stream-quarantine-laurel-halos-debut-album-for-hyperdub/

Oh, stream seems to be working fine for me!

Wow, vocals on this are certainly interesting.

Oh no. I'm about ten minutes in, and I don't think I like it that much. It's nowhere near as beat oriented as the stuff on the EPs that I really liked. Maybe I should listen to it on better headphones, but this isn't really doing anything for me so far. I keep hoping it will improve and it just kind of meanders.

liveblog: it's picking up at the halfway mark, with that backwards vocal piece into the most rhythmic + interesting track so far

I'm about halfway in, and I'm getting something which sounds like a choir of crying babies? Not feeling it.

this is not even remotely like her eps and remixes but it's... totally awesome?

sort of love the multilayered vocals meeting up with strange, incomplete ambience

Great record. But the vocals are definitely confronting, feels untreated, emotionally direct, at times jarring. Maybe I'll report back have a few more listens.

There's some beautiful moments though: Light + Space, Holoday, Years.

Wow. This is really odd compared to the last EP. I'm getting kinda Nico vibes from it which I never would have expected prior to listening. Interesting.

Has anyone kept without throughout the last fortnight or so and can say how it sounds after ten listens?

Gotta say I'm more intrigued to see what this is like live - due to see her at Field Day next week.

Has anyone kept without throughout the last fortnight or so and can say how it sounds after ten listens?

even better now. weirdly compelled to listen to it.

Good. Just listened it through for the first time. I guess she likes The Marble Index, right?

yea? never thought of that :/

Oh, this is exciting! I really liked Hour Logic.

Scared away by the previews on the Hyperdub site, but loving Hour Logic at the mo. Very good for walking around big cities in the rain. Rory Gibb talks a lot about internet living in relation to her work in his quietus review of the new one, tho I find that reading a bit tired and untrue to my experience of her music. May give it a go when I'm feeling more adventurous.

New one sounds pretty nice.

i liked hour logic but this isn't doing it for me. seems kind of uncomfortably insular.

Hour Logic is such a great record. Seems better and better every time I return to it.

Blown away by Quarantine. What a FANTASTIC album this is.

Seems I've missed some backstory here...

wow, i'd liked her stuff before but this new album might be the worst music i've heard this year. it's just...gross-sounding

AND it's nothingy

takes a few plays for it to click, but i think it's great

To be honest, I nearly turned it off halfway through Years - those vocals! - but something about it was so "off", that it held my interest a while longer. As some reviewers have mentioned, I like the stark separation between the murky soup of the music and the untreated rawness of the vocals. Only played it twice - once late at night, when it stopped me going to bed, and once mid-morning, when it stopped me getting any work done. Arrestingly original.

I've not really found her previous records to be that interesting so the fact this is proving so divisive is kinda intriguing.

To be honest, I nearly turned it off halfway through Years - those vocals!

i nearly tweeted at that point "is there ANY point in me continuing with this piece of shit" but i soldiered on and it got no better. seriously those vocals are unlistenable and the music is completely insubstantial, in a vaguely queasy out-of-tune way. and has she put any thought into the structure of any track> it seems completely directionless and random.

i don't really think there's a separation b/w the vox and the music, nothing of consequence happens it either, and it doesn't happen in a horrible-sounding way.

it's definitely the worst album i've sat all the way through this year.

I feel like I'm going to have to give it another cursory listen if/when it turns up on Spotify but this album really was one of the biggest disappointments of the year so far.

And in a year of so many solid releases (SVIIB! Grimes! Dawn Richard! I'm hoping I get to add Cooly G! to this list, Coldplay cover or no) the idea of having to put time and effort into something I found so initially ... revolting (not even in the sense of gross, in the sense of, my ears revolted against having to hear it) just doesn't seem particularly like a good way of spending my time.

I definitely can relate, but it's strange since it also feels calculated and intentional.

Oh, I'm sure that it is! I just don't want to put it in mine ears.

it definitely seems calculated and deliberate - i LOVE halo's vox on games' "strawberry skies" so it's not like this is all she can do with her voice

which makes it worse, i almost feel offended that she expects people to accept work this shoddy

I'm only three songs in but I'm finding something somewhat beguiling in all of this, like her vocals are in tune until such point as she decides she wants them not to be, but I'm not sure that's necessarily interesting in itself and I've no idea whether or not the album in general will hold up once the initial weirdness factor has worn off.

I should say disorientation rather than weirdness, it seems to be intentionally disorienting.

Airy and nothing seems to be the default choice for electronic-leaning indie vocalist types this year and I'm not sure I need another record in that vein.

Wanting to go back to this less and less and less. Shame, b/c after Hour Logic I was really looking fwd to this album. 'Strawberry Skies' is magical as well.

xp re "airy and nothing"... absolutely, and it's a style which usually leaves me cold (at best) or infuriates me (at worst)... but there's something else going on here which, to my ears, rises above all of that. (This year's other prime example of "an album I rate in a genre I hate": Beach House - Bloom.)

currently in absolute stitches at how terrible this is

lex otm

found this album well-listenable, and was compelled to purchase it after a month of getting familiar w/it.

Don't know that they're really comparable, but quarantine feels like oneohtrix point never's latest direction (replica), though quarantine is catchier. Maybe that's a stretch, and maybe her vocals mar it but on the whole it works. Don't think it "nothingy" at all, in fact it's well-crafted and cohesive. Liked the bit (in some interview, pitchfork?) about her trying out reverbed-out vocals at first and then just going w/them dry/grating instead. Maybe just high, and haven't listened to hour logic yet. "carcass" got a neat mbv-interlude vibe to it.

meant to say that i couldn't get into replica at all, where this keeps compelling to replay. whoa, "tumor" is kinda hard to stomach, but then that welcome, blissed-out piano chord (morcom) follows up on it

"nerve" got that warm, bendy, boards-y, christ.-y interlude thing going on, too. blissed out sounds throughout this thing.

this record feels like she's been listening to the latest prefuse 73 pretty much non-stop, or maybe that's just me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABCgiQYSEM4

i really like "carcass" tho.

Read an interview with her in Stool Pigeon yesterday. Couple of quotes:

“When I was making this record, I was thinking a lot about isolation, so it always conjured these images of being in an anechoic chamber or a vacuum, or inside some pressurised tank. Which led to aeroplanes and lapping up recycled air, and the toxicity of office places or schools, where disease is just cycling around the air ducts.”

And:

“I wanted to make the vocal sound inhuman, while obviously coming from a human place. Just kind of stripped bare and ugly, with all of its qualities and all of its flaws. That cognitive dissonance between the really placid, peaceful, enveloping, evolving synthetic textures, with this kind of cutting vocal, it creates a nice dynamic.”

can't deny the similarities to that prefuse 73 youtube, but the prefuse track sounds muddled, where quarantine has a sort of polished humidity and conciseness to it. opening track (bassline) on quarantine always suggests "captain of her heart" in my head.

That DJ Kicks mix is still great, it deserves more love

not that into DJ mixes in general, but I really like it

re-reading this thread makes me wonder what Ross is up to

hmmm I'm contemplating running a poll of her catalog.. I'm curious to see how that would turn out

(an album poll, that is, not a ballot poll)

I think I still like Hour Logic the most, because of my attachment to the experience of discovering her work at a time when it felt like it was making a novel and exciting step towards a kind of new idm-ish sound for the 2010s, and was its own thing, before that would become relatively commonplace in the following years.

Quarantine. I'm still really amused how angry some people here got about that record.

King Felix spring is still her best record and slept on so yeah...

― Ross, Wednesday, August 8, 2018 1:04 AM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I just listened to this for the first time in years and it is incredible. Don't remember it hitting me so hard before. The drum programming is virtuosic, the samples and synths lush. All is well for the moment.

The new Caterina Barbieri album giving me massive early LH vibes after a first bandcamp listen.

a lot more vocals that I was expecting, and the way they sit in the mix feels very Quarantine-era Halo.

mix from july
https://soundcloud.com/discwoman/discwoman-27-x-laurel-halo

― Week of Wonders (Ross), Thursday, October 12, 2017 10:39 AM (five years ago) bookmarkflaglink

if you haven't heard this mix, you owe it to yourself

she is on another level as a DJ, it's really impressive that every single track stands out in it's own way and the mix is stylistically all over the place, but somehow she manages to make it flow naturally and seamlessly. it's rare to hear something so eclectic that doesn't devolve into chaos.

I think I've said this before but seeing her DJ a few years ago was a great experience, lots of gqom and early bleep tracks, incredible energy

thrilled to announce my first album in five years, Atlas, is coming out September 22 on my new label Awe. You can listen to the first single 'Belleville', a piano ballad which features a harmony stack moment with @cobysey

pre-order & more info here: https://t.co/9E8tirjQFs pic.twitter.com/wxJiutnNhj

— Laurel Halo (@LaurelHalo) July 12, 2023

also, I may have previously posted this on different thread, but this is another stunning mix

https://soundcloud.com/laurelhalo/laurel-halo-nowadays-nyc-562023

yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes! yes!

new album popped up on bandcamp today... definitely could use more reverb. j/k .. i don't know if €11 is realistic for digital only. i'm going in for a third listen, and don't have slsk rn. cot damn (charging 11 euros for digital only) these bands. this new album reminds me of gas narkopop (similarly inviting, swirl of strings/ orchestra) on the surface. eleven euros, ouch :\

I think this album is really incredibly beautiful and unlike anything else I've heard.

i do enjoy the piano / rhodes / keyboard playing of laurel halo (wish there was more of it) .. the rest of atlas has grown on me after a couple of listens. it does remind me of other records--the quality of the sounds/ production (at times like an ocean) as a whole - drenched in reverb. it feels overly immersive (a dense wash) at times, having only listened to it on a phone. i like the listening environment to impart some reverb on the audio (on a proper listen) .. minor quibble aside, it is nice.

I guess to me it seems like a weird mix of Debussy, Ligeti, slow jazz, ambient music, drone, and film music, with nostalgic submersed keyboards and disguised voices, and with subtle but very striking insertion of background electronic noises

it sounds like it might open up nicely on headphones. i'm complaining after listening to it on a smartphone (externally) which is an obvious problem. i was deliberating over whether or not to buy the CD, which i can't afford rn. my stereo system is set up in a small-ish, tiled room which sort of amplifies the audio nicely w/its natural reverb. blah blah blah. i like your description, Dan S

I listened to it today and it was very ambient and drifty. Will have to give it another try.

this album is fucked up (compliment)

Played it twice through back to back. Just lovely.

Sounds marvelous

Sold on the basis of your description, Dan.

Yeah, this is *very* where I'm at, what I want from music these days. Beautiful and unsettled, sweet and ominous. Well worth the $20 it costs to get the CD shipped from wherever.

very good album 👍

This is great. First thought when putting it on was Roly Porter and sure enough there's James Ginzburg in the production credits. Title track reminds me of Richard Skelton if anyone. All those dense vibrating strings in a haunted landscape.

very much looking forward to hearing this <3 raw silk uncut wood and seems like this might be a continuation of that vibe?

raw silk... is the only release of hers/theirs that's left me utterly cold. this new one is quite compelling (i keep wanting to listen to it) in comparison, imo. there's an instance partway through Atlas that recalls the melancholy of Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic.. the atmosphere, vibe, everything. i recall two separate performances / releases of TSotT (before the philip jeck thing), one (or both?) of them were recorded in an old water tower, or some kind of approximation of that. the atmosphere (depth of it, mournful strings, etc.) is quite similar. apart from that, it's definitely singular-sounding, esp. in l'oeuvre de halo.

*par ou de ... no se

Wow this is gorgeous.

parts of it feel like Autechre's "all end" arranged for strings

Played this intensely loud this afternoon and just dissolved into it. Brilliant record.

Yeah I put it on yesterday during a drifty disco nap, lovely.

raw silk... is the only release of hers/theirs that's left me utterly cold.

btw, "Reading the Air" (after 4 minutes, on Atlas) is the only track that vaguely reminded me of Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of The Titanic, in part of its chord progression. still haven't listened to Atlas on a proper system.

*getting familiar with Raw Silk Uncut Wood, that is

Atlas was my 2023 AOTY, and now she already has a new EP out, Octavia

https://laurelhalo.bandcamp.com/album/octavia

Oh that’s awesome, I’ve had to ration how often I play Atlas so I don’t burn out on it