“Uses samples and field recordings to add layers of depth to a full band arrangement, a style which speaks to the album’s concerns with the dynamic between restraint and release.” So we wrote of ‘Please‘, the lead single from Otracami‘s new album Runoff, coming next month via Figure & Ground. Picking up the ideas started on predecessor touching the stove coil (an album which offered “a strange mixture of pain and pleasure” as we wrote in our review, akin to “approaching something which will almost certainly hurt, yet glows alluringly all the same”) Runoff sees Brooklyn-based songwriter, producer and composer Camila Ortiz channel the imagery of the title to explore the tension which develops between containment and overflow, be that in spheres of work, life or love.
Latest single ‘Sirens’ turns to the past in order to continue this investigation. Namely Greek myth and the story of Persephone, herself something of a contradiction. The goddess of death and the afterlife, as well as that of vegetation and spring. Otracami weaves these mythic elements with personal reflection, the track a folk song at heart yet blooming into something altogether richer and more nuanced as it develops. How far do the obligations of loyalty extend? Ortiz asks, using the tale of Persephone and her handmaidens. When you are linked to a person involved with something bad, how much responsibility are you expected to take? The themes are expanded upon by the accompanying video, starring Ortiz and made by long-term collaborator Sai Tripathi along with PA Dylan Karlsson, which pushes the song towards something closer to performance art. Watch below:
Runoff will be released on the 20th March via Figure & Ground and you can pre-order it now.
