Compared to her other projects, Masha solo is mostly concerned with amplifying those aspects of her musical output that don’t originate in the dynamics of a band (which is vital in her other projects), but make audible a feeling of the private.
Here memories, hopes, disappointments, joy and regret are translated into songs, which sometimes are concrete enough to be intersubjectively comprehensible, but often point poetically into the private of the singing voice and cannot be decoded directly, only be felt with intuitively.
A dialogue emerges: Between Masha and the listener, between the “I” and the “you” of her lyrics, between her doubled voices on the two poles of the stereo panorama. And the question of how far the person of the songwriter reaches into the songs, how much she hides in them.
Masha Qrella | Hypersomnia
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=gOYkX6kyvp8
Born to a Russian physicist and a German mother who worked as a somnologist, Masha Qrella’s childhood was naturally both laid-back and exciting. It was around the time when Jim O’Rourke started out in Chicago, when Stereolab were busy taking over London while Mouse on Mars were re-inventing the sound of Düsseldorf.
At that time Masha and her trusted companions (among them bass player/engineer Norman Nitzsche) set out to create Berlin’s own version of post rock in a small basement somewhere in mellow Berlin-Pankow.
In 2002, Masha Qrella released her first solo album entitled Luck and thus emerged as a singer-songwriter. After two more albums, among them Speak Low, a collection of beautifully rendered Kurt Weill and Frederick Loewe cover songs released in 2009, Masha is about to drop a new album entitled Analogies in May 2012.
It is essentially her take on pop music, sitting perfectly between folk, indie rock, and the huge radio anthems from decades past. Once again it is an album that was recorded in that tiny studio in Berlin-Pankow, but it’s clearly designed to blow minds all over the world.
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Masha Qrella LIVE
Tuesday, 29 May 2012 | 20:00 CET
Ballhaus Ost | Pappelallee 15 | 10437 Berlin/Prenzlauer Berg
mashaqrella.de | ballhausost.de
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