Laurine Frost - Lena (2020)

Laurine Frost's debut album 'LENA' reinterpretates Dostoyevsky's surreal novel and presents an utopistic self-revelation that leads to an exquisite musical journey. A weird collage of jazz and dub-fusions as an extension of wonky polyrhythmic patterns and the organic abstraction of bass-heavy drums, breaks and percussions. Call it as electronica, IDM or techno – anyhow, you are wrong. This album doesn't seem to fit into any genre. Laurine Frost tends to master his story-telling skills by inviting the listener to 13 imaginary scenes that can be approached, heard and understood from different points of view. A living and stirring masterpiece that is independent from time and actual trends.

Release Note by Laurine Frost:

"The thematic focus of this album draws from multiple sources. An utopistic self-revelation that has the purpose to paint imaginary landscapes and surreal scenes, to talk about past and future that never occurred and never will, to describe the pure human nature in its most honest and instinctive form – much like in our dreams.

This album is a chaotic and contemporary musical reinterpretation of a short story 'The Dream Of A Ridiculous Man' written by Fyodor Dostoyevsky in 1877 and its animation movie adaptation with the same title by Alexandr Petrov (1992).
„It captures the experiences of a man who decides that there is nothing of value in the world. He contemplates how he has always been such a ridiculous person and also how he came to the realization that nothing really matters to him any more. ... He ends up slipping into nihilism and was determined to take his own life until a sudden dream about a surreal encounter with this little girl accompanies him on his fatal journey. Towards the end, he kept wanting to go back to that dream, and that is all he was obsessing about, presumably with the intent of reconciling and atoning for his lack of kindness.”

Replacing Dostoyevsky's original characters with my father, and the little girl's character with my imaginary daughter, I intended to explain myself and how i saw the relation between my father and how I looked up to him, seeing him as a hero during my childhood, in contrast to how I saw him loosing his faith and dignity day by day in his later years. 'Lena' – the girl in the dream, also my daughter in this concept - is my gift to his memory.

Lena's imaginary character is also inspired by lifetime events, modelled and collaged from children and women I was lucky enough to know. Just as my father wanted me to be the perfect child, I created Lena on the same way. The theatrical scenes of their meeting through 13 dreams tend to describe a surreal mixture of blissful and sinless moments in contradiction with sorrow and solitude. How a child's innocent and pure soul can reveal the true value of our personalities.

Being inspired by my fathers personality – halfway while producing this album - he committed suicide and passed away in 2015 – not knowing about the project I'm working on.

Besides its emotional charge 'LENA' is also a musical propaganda against the unfortunate attitude of today's musical scene and electronic music producers. Not infected by fashionable trends, this album is a call against cliché and monotonous reproduction. I believe the only art-form that shines through time is fuelled by individuality, honesty and will. The most important thing is to be grateful for what we've got from the past generations, and being strong enough to carefully give it back to the next – as a heritage.
This is what culture about. To define ourselves."