Lucy Gooch’s music is a beautiful ethereal fog; like hearing a subliminal echo of Kate Bush on a fading tape loop, masked by an internal wall of sound that vibrates with the hum of everyday life. She grew up in rural Norfolk, singing in choirs. Her search for harmony took her to Bristol and its evolving ambient scene. Lucy’s debut EP, ‘Rushing’, gained plaudits from NPR to The Guardian.
Imagine The Cocteau Twins’ dream pop, cautiously overlapping Cluster’s trippy nuances; cast a thought of Eno and Julie London after cocktails. Think of the church organist on downers and the choir free forming, a phalanx of voices vying for attention. It’s a truly uplifting and life-affirming sound; dramatic, filmic, passionate.
“Gooch’s voice is rich and angelic, matching the timbre of the lush surrounding instrumentation” enthused Bandcamp as part of its Best New Ambient Music round-up early in 2020.
“An unusually developed aesthetic vision, one that joins the atmospheric quality of ambient music with the structure of choral composition and the seeming effortlessness of pop” Pitchfork
“Perfect existential listening” The Guardian
“The moment is short, but Lucy Gooch’s music makes it last forever. Rushing layers ambient synths and vocal melodies in a paradox of weightless textures freighted with emotion.” NPR
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Marina Allen’s music is like that rollercoaster ride you have in your dreams, a moving, hard-to-believe balancing act that crosses tracks, occasionally leaves the rails and invariably flows unapologetically, succinctly and spine-tinglingly to a glorious conclusion.
Her voice surfs many musical tangents, hovers and persists, floats and, only when entirely necessary, stings with honesty and aplomb; it morphs from Karen Carpenter’s gentle reverence to Laura Nyro’s soulful grit, moves through the phases like some possessed Dada performance artist before throwing in a melody from Joni at her jazziest or the close harmonies of the lamented Roches when they flipped out with Robert Fripp.
She writes songs that carry notes from other realms, as she dotes at the lake on an acoustic guitar with her feet dangling in the water; these are kitchen table tales about love and fear, the capturing of the wild heart, sketching the breaking of dawn, bringing real life to life.
Her majestic debut album, ‘Candlepower’ celebrates the magical flicker within, following it till it dims. Her voice is mercurial and wonderfully infectious, her songs are poetry in motion.
Photo credit: Garret Miller (western gifts)
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