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"Such a forceful collection of parts woven together that you kind of feel like you can just float on it" NPR
“[Closer] wraps existential concerns of inner peace and connecting with one's surroundings inside of a tense, gentle ascendent ballad.” The FADER
“super chill and kinda takes you on this dreamy journey” BBC
Maria Chiara Argirò’s Closer is an album to get lost in. The rising electronic luminary and classically trained pianist presents a journey of self-exploration, and a manifestation of her profound connection with music. Rooted in an indescribable feeling that compelled her to create, the album transcends boundaries and tranverses the spectrum of electronic music with unparalleled depth and clarity. On the album, Maria says:
“It is about a feeling, a dreamlike feeling in motion, a feeling that we cannot describe, a dream I’m sort of walking through. Emotions/dreams/feelings that sometimes you can just imagine, a dreamlike world where we walk through to get to the core of ourselves a bit more, even if things are completely undefined and blurry. While working on the music there was this strong feeling - at times blurry and at times more defined - of getting, with every single note, closer and closer to the person I want to be. Free. Curious and consequently Aware, Connected and Closer to the people I love. There is so much noise in this world, I think being direct, gentle, light, open and connected is the key.”
Argirò has been a central figure in the UK electronic, jazz and classical worlds since she moved to London from Rome over a decade ago. A skilled pianist since childhood, she’s collaborated with everyone from These New Puritans to Jono McCleery to Jamie Leeming alongside output with Moonfish. Closer comes as the follow up to her stunning electronic jazz-fusion record Forest City, which received widespread critical acclaim across the globe and earned her fanship from Four Tet and Gilles Peterson, with the latter describing her music as “absolutely crazy good”.
The result of this journey, both sonic and personal, can be keenly felt on Closer. While it is definitely not a concept album, the record does mirror the path of inner self-exploration that Argirò has been on. Albeit moving in unpredictable ways, as it traverses the spectrum of electronic music spanning ambient to dance music, while also retaining light touches of jazz with a leaning towards experimental pop via Argirò’s more central and up-front vocals.
Closer sees its release alongside a new official video for album centerpiece “Time”. The live performance was filmed at The Cross London (King's Cross) and was directed by frequent collaborator Raoul Paulet.
Read more about the album on Line of Best Fit
dadá Joãozinho shares the video for "Sem Limitlesssss" from his most recent release tds bem Global. Says dadá Joãozinho about the song/video: “being in São Paulo inspired me to go off my limits, to grow, to know things about myself I couldn’t see. It’s a song about desire really, about transformation. I wanted this song and video to feel like a ritual, lead by this mantra, for breaking boundaries, going beyond what’s been said to be possible, beyond reality. It’s an imagination game, believing through this games we create new worlds.”
For more on the artist, check the most recent Billboard piece.
On Closer, rising electronic luminary and classically trained pianist Maria Chiara Argirò presents a journey of self-exploration, and a manifestation of her profound connection with music. Her new single “Floating” is meant to be listened to with your eyes closed. Maria tells, “While writing ‘Floating’, I was deeply thinking about a mind exploration of the reality/unreality of things, life/subconscious/conscious, the quiet moments vs the noise moments and the dreams vs reality. Floating, blurry images that become reality or mix with the imagination and vice-versa. Lyrically, it’s like a mantra and we end up floating (in the dreams or reality?)”
Rooted in an indescribable feeling that compelled her to create, the album transcends boundaries and tranverses the spectrum of electronic music with unparalleled depth and clarity. On the album, Maria says:
“It is about a feeling, a dreamlike feeling in motion, a feeling that we cannot describe, a dream I’m sort of walking through. Emotions/dreams/feelings that sometimes you can just imagine, a dreamlike world where we walk through to get to the core of ourselves a bit more, even if things are completely undefined and blurry. While working on the music there was this strong feeling - at times blurry and at times more defined - of getting, with every single note, closer and closer to the person I want to be. Free. Curious and consequently Aware, Connected and Closer to the people I love. There is so much noise in this world, I think being direct, gentle, light, open and connected is the key.”
"warm, wistful, and quaint all at once" - HYPEBEAST
"softly lit tones with a jazz influence, his fuzzy, lo-fi sense of soul touches upon the intimate at every turn" - CLASH
“dreamy soul-tinged adult alternative songs" - ALLMUSIC
On the heels of an album with BADBADNOTGOOD and working with the likes of Clairo & Mustafa, Jonah Yano returns with another collaboration. This time with fellow Canadian and next door neighbor Le Ren. "Lauren and I met in summer of 2021 when I was first living in montreal. We were introduced over text by a mutual friend of ours. A few weeks after we first met we decided to get together and try working on music together - I had just finished recording Portrait of a Dog. The first day we wrote together it went so well that we got together again the next day, and the next, and the next. I think over 2 weeks we must've spent at least 10 days writing songs together and recording onto my 4 track and computer. We've been friends ever since and are now next door neighbours. We live in Little Italy (hence the EP name) and our apartments share the same wall. The 3 demos on this are definitely the best summary of what we wrote together. And actually even though we live so close to each other, we haven't really gotten back together to write much since. I think these demos are a window into the short and special moment when we were on exactly the same page and wanted to make the same thing."
Check out the 3 song EP titled the little italy demos at this link.
Los Angeles duo Peel release their debut album Acid Star. The creative partnership of Sean Cimino and Isom Innis, their bond was initially formed as touring members of Foster The People (now both official members live & on record). The two developed a musical language all their own over the years, ideas coalescing organically until the eventual birth of Peel. Inspired in part by genre-bending Creation Records bands like Primal Scream and Madchester groups like Happy Mondays, Acid Star expands on the industrial edge of early Peel, adding layers of psychedelia, electronica, and even reverb soaked freak folk.
“I look at Acid Star as a place where all of our expressions across different mediums were able to exist in the same orbit and create something new together,” shares Innis, “Lyrically I was trying to process digital mania, boredom, and joy in the present while sonically trying to make dance music through a band lens.” Cimino adds, “This album to me a tribute to the power of words and music that transcends boundaries from start to finish.”
The album is preceded by singles “Y2J,” a psychedelic dance tune with dream pop elements, “Acid Star,” a hallucinatory comedown of washed out acoustic guitars, “Climax,” which Paste Magazine praised as a “unique convergence of post-punk, electronica and psychedelia,” “OMG” & “Cycle.”
For Acid Star, the duo began by tapping into the music that they liked as kids. That is, the music they gravitated toward before they had “any taste or judgment,” as Innis puts it. “If you think too hard, and you try too hard, you can kind of ruin the expression that comes out,” he adds. “But there’s something about trying to recreate a song that was in my DNA before taste came into it that just sounded, listening back, like it had a lot of energy and life.”
The opener, “Y2J,” was one of the results of that childhood-song experiment, and is, appropriately enough, named in reference to Y2K. “Climax,” a song inspired by the 2018 Gaspar Noé movie of the same name, is a rocket-ship ride of a tune, as much within Nile Rodgers’ wheelhouse as Spoon’s.
Each side of the album is bookmarked by ghostly ballads—“Acid Star” and “The Cloak”—both driven by acoustic guitar and gentle vocals that push home the crucially melodic underbelly of Peel itself. “You’re smiling, laughing there, my acid star,” sings Cimino on the former song, an ode to an idea of a certain ephemeral and untouchable type of rock god. “That lyric is a tribute to the power of words beyond our everyday use,” Cimino says. “I was thinking of a term for someone, something, or an idea that is so meaningful—almost too important.” When it came time to decide what to name the album itself, it was right there in front of them.
Check Paste Magazine for a band description of all tracks on the new album.