For her second album on PAN, Marina Herlop, with her sibyllin vocals, creates a world of multitudes delivered with impressive clarity.
While she waited for her last, widely acclaimed album Pripyat to be released, she started composing Nekkuja, for which she would be visualizing herself, as stated in the record’s notes, « as a gardener, pulling out purple weeds from the soil, every bad memory or emotion (she) wanted to expulse being one of the plants. »
In search of her inner light, Marina Herlop is a distinctive voice in contemporary electronic music who seeks positive and vital pulses in a scene « so entranced by darkness and melancholy ».
On Pripyat she already toyed with her classical virtuosity with a risky, refreshing palette of experimental pop that exceeded the common lyrical expectations. She goes even further with Nekkuja, in tracing « an imaginary garden » in her very own approach.
The intrepidness of her cut-up, electroacoustic techniques add a lot to the vividness of her music. Her vocal chops glide between powerful bursts and fallbacks, with instrumental, emotional motifs following continual shifts in flow.
Like on the celebratory Cosset or on the more uneasy Reina Mora – and its « oh » « ah » « uh » « aye », her bold use of vocals is a thread that guides the listener into her sharp and stimulant alliance of sounds. Piano rolls, strings, flutes can be processed electronically to build up tension for percussiveness.
At times, field recordings of an earthy soil, insects and birds chirping not only set the backdrop of her garden but are musically impactful as any other sound. Without any overuse, they parcimoniously link all the parts together into one dramatic statement. Each song constitutes a fragment of a greater narrative, where abstract events unfold, counted and intricately experienced by Herlop. It’s when all second weight with intention that time becomes a medium of intensity, and as a consequence makes it run pretty quickly. Even on « Interlude ».
In an era in which consistency can get lost in an overload of content, Nekkuja, in its variations of velocities and 27 min length, is dense but never loses sight. We’re even offered a rare, condensed sense of awareness : Herlop’s glossolalia being for something. Native Catalans might understand some of what she sings or howls about on La Alhambra, for instance, but mainly, her vocals are an unintelligible presence that is heard in pure harmonic terms, disseminated in the sonic picture, like seeds, for our sole joy or sorrow.
Mati Klarwin’s art work – whose pictures have been featured on a lot of album covers, for instance Jon Hassell borrowed his visual work for his album Listening to Pictures (2019) – only reinforces the vividness of Nekkuja. We might not listen to a picture here, but rather metaphorically breathe in it, through organic paths, with all their charming perils.
From a restless and cryptic voice, we can still learn a lot. Where things are able to grow vigorously, great things are earned with care and perseverance. Nekkuja being one fair example.
Charles Wesley 