Recording under the moniker leoblu for the past few years, Åland-born, Berlin-based artist Julia Carlsson has developed what we’ve called an “ambiguous and atmospheric music which situates intimate emotion against the more mysterious forces at work around us,” with releases like Blu Lucid Nightmare embodying a sound shot through with shadow and light. But now Carlsson has turned the page and started a new chapter: Snake Orange Cake. Armed with a looper, sampler, synth and vocals, Carlsson intends to use the project as a fresh start, aiming to explore “the borderlands between spoken word, experimental electronics, and raw emotional storytelling.”
After first single ‘Stitch’, a song which “offers a glimpse of the invention and playfulness which underpins the new project,” as we put it in a preview, “weaving a detailed, rhythmic sound over which Carlsson’s spoken vocals play with disarming closeness,” Snake Orange Cake has returned with new track, ‘Hair’. A song about the small joys of life which is suitably subtle in style, its layers of percussion and electronics forming a warm bed over which Carlsson’s vocals play.
The sound might not fully lose the ambiguity which marked leoblu, but here feels not so much ominous and nocturnal as organic, as though the arrangement is its own small biome teeming with mysterious life. A tangle which Snake Orange Cake nurtures and embraces, the vocals stitching into the sound itself to embrace themes of growth and acceptance.
Watch the video, shot at Berlin’s only waterfall, by photographer Pablo Hassmann below:
‘Hair’ is out now and available to stream and download from the Snake Orange Cake Bandcamp page.
Portrait photo by joel ivan thomas