Laurel Halo

Debut album coming out in May on Hyperdub, new EP as King Felix out on Liberation Technologies very shortly. Looking forward to hearing both of these, probably time for her own thread.

http://new.assets.thequietus.com/images/articles/8317/laurel_halo_quarantine_1332348513_crop_550x550.jpg

^ Cover of the album (Quarantine) is O_O btw

http://3fram.es/gifs/B/bXt.gif

I am anticipating the hell out of this. Hour Logic was one of my favourite moments of 2011. Thank you, Sandbox post-Knife electronica thread (even though I don't think she really fit in that genre, I loved the heck out of the stuff that was posted.)

(Philip K Dick refs and all)

Hour Logic was one of my favourite moments of 2011

Yeah yeah, damn right! I was a little dismissive of the second half of that record, but I've been re-listening lately and boy, am I a big dummy. Quarantine is supposed to be more song-based and along the lines of the 'King Felix' EP from 2010.

I think that, on the basis of last year's releases, I like her sounds and textures a lot more than anything she actually does with them, but will give this a listen.

No, that record went really interesting places, the first half was perhaps more immediate, but where it ended up fascinated me, it was like it took you round corners and ran off in different directions.

Yeah, excited about this one. That cover is AMAZING.

OMG I didn't even see the cover. The WTFness... but also... beautiful. Head hurts.

i need to go back to her stuff, i didn't fully get into hour logic before my hard drive died and i lost it.

i LOVE her vocal on games' "strawberry skies"

I think my fave track on Hour Logic was actually the title track, which is, like a 9 minute trance epic that stops mid-stream and goes somewhere else at least twice during the course of the song (...and gets lost in the jetstream)

A couple of nice things she's done outside of her two EPs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOth11wGCnM

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

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 listen to a lot of mixes and i think her selections for this have a wild and trippy energy with tons of enigmatic texture and the contrast between tracks is almost always unexpected and frankly bizarre in an electrifying way. i don't hear a lot of mixes that do that. also i don't even know what off-the-charts amazing technically great mixing would even sound like and don't much care to hear it if the selection isn't on par.

a few of the tracks have like an art-punk punch that feels legitimately destabilizing to me in a dance mix. i mean maybe what i don't listen to 'enough' of or whatever is like cutting edge nihilistic bizarre exploratory dance music in which case i'm very grateful for this mix.

a wild and trippy energy with tons of enigmatic texture

This nails exactly what I love about the mix. Reminds me a bit of Magda maybe.

That all makes sense. I definitely remember when it was hard to access mixes, and commercial mixes were my first exposure to anything of the sort. Maybe now that everything is so easily accessible, elevating a mix to release status comes with unfair expectations.

yeah i mean the micro-math of multiple little niche market hype bubbles interacting with each other seems to determine who gets shine among a large number of competent to great djs these days and that can get tiring but i try not to care so much when there are so many opportunities to hear excellent and transporting mix experiences day to day.

its a standout imo

a few of the tracks have like an art-punk punch that feels legitimately destabilizing to me in a dance mix. i mean maybe what i don't listen to 'enough' of or whatever is like cutting edge nihilistic bizarre exploratory dance music in which case i'm very grateful for this mix.

― cheese canopy (map), Wednesday, April 3, 2019 3:00 PM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

totally

I will say I think on a few listens I like the boiler room set posted above more than the DJ Kicks mix.

i am listening to quarantine rn

it is the best album ever

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

i do enjoy the piano / rhodes / keyboard playing of laurel halo (wish there was more of it)

saw her play last night and it was super good for appreciating her piano skills - accompanied by a cellist & doing a great job of evoking atlas vibe & textures with pedals/mixers/backing tracks - but the piano was a lot more foregrounded than on the LP & this offered a nice alternate perspective on the compositions

was lucky enough to see her touring Chance of Rain and Dust and those shows were great but this was my favourite…

dunno how I missed Octavia. sounds amazing so far.

Yeah the gig was very very good: knew she had chops, was a pleasure to see her work with them for an hour! Leila Bordreuil on the Cello was lovely accompaniment, wholistic performance. Had a listen to her music afterwards and her Headflush album is fantastic drone.