hara alonso - touch•me•not (Fuu)
- The Slow Music Movement
- 14 minutes ago
- 2 min read
*** This blog post first appeared in TSMM's May 7th Newsletter, where you can get all the tips (and more) first ***
Hara Alonso is Spanish pianist, composer and sound artist currently resident in Stockholm, where she’s working as researcher at Stockholm’s University of the Arts. As you can imagine, having also lectured in music programming and improvisation, her music is restless and hard to pin down, veering from minimal piano to club ready beats and all sorts of ambient experiments.
Her new LP pretty much combines all of the above in one fluid, shape shifting thirty minute listen that kicks off in disarming, gently swirling, percussion dotted ambient fashion, but like any good storm the intensity slowly but surely builds, the percussion picks up and starts to shower those still outside as sound sources largely unknown blow in from the north adding extra density and darkness to the clouds before petering out in a flurry of what sounds like cello abuse. After the storm comes the respite and “Millions of Other Suns” is outsider ambient pop, Alonso’s wraithlike vocals haunting a becalmed, low frequency weighted, impressively detailed soundscape. “Covered in Noise” sees her vocals take on more human ASMR form, whispering seductively over her minimal piano, aquatic field recordings and not unpleasant machine noise, which when it’s done morphs into the slightly more restless, uneasier piano ambience of “Veins (Veils)”.
“Breaths, Pulsations, Murmurs“ sees more spectral vocals riding ambient electronic currents before hi-frequency percussion and some punchy beats mould the track into start of club night warm up form. Just in case the excitement was too much, Alonso sees this adventurous listen out with the a light, almost fluffy tonal outro. Alonso is one of a kind and this is perhaps the fullest realisation of her art so far, check it.
Playlist Companion
Find Alonso in the machine loving Slowtronic Playlist: