Laryssa Kim - Contezza (2024)

One sinks into "Contezza" as into a fluffy sleep. Shadows cling to the brain, thoughts cascade down vast velvety layers. Then comes limbo, where the known merges with the indescribable. The is no spatiotemporal reference to pinpoint one’s location, lost in a slow river of ghostly voice fragments, astounding electronic riffs permeated with the organic sounds of the sensitive world. In the first three tracks, Laryssa Kim takes us to the depths of her "Contezza," a timeworn Italian word meaning "consciousness."

Playing with languages as with sounds, invisible artifacts bearing witness to her Italo-Congolese origins, Laryssa shifts from hybrid to contrast. If the - more openly sensual - fourth track, "L'Attente – Auspicio," distills soft, vaporous French lyrics, the dissonances of the synth layers are there to remind us that a worrying, dangerously familiar face can always disturb the most charming of pictures.

At a crossroad where Brian Eno, Enya, and Erykah Badu meet, “Contezza” is thus an inner journey. The result of a retreat that, as for the majority of humans in 2020, occured with the Covid-19 pandemic. Convinced that it marked the end of her career, Laryssa used this forced break to deepen her knowledge of meditation practices and her curiosity for esotericism, astrology, magic, and Chinese oracles. With both feet firmly on the ground, Laryssa allowed herself to play with signs and senses. Instinctively, when the sanitary situation bettered, and she returned to music, it is Love that she wants to talk about on this new album. Love and its disappointments, but also what it can teach us about ourselves when it fades away like a dream, like tides of pleasure and anxiety, mirrors of our most mysterious faults, as do the great masters of a chiaroscuro aesthetic, beyond good and evil, such as David Lynch and Miyazaki.

She conceived the album as a ritual, a magical process: an exorcism through beauty to ward off the evil eye she suspects she is stuck with. Without lecturing, Laryssa humbly invites creative introspection, the perpetual invention of oneself, relentless, through play and the openness to the infinite details of daily life, such as the fridge’s hum or her mother's toilet clock in Rome, which find a new place in “Contezza’s” dreamlike mini-universes, both ancient and turned towards the most contemporary composition techniques. A spiritual exploration of self that Laryssa envisions in the manner of Jodorowski: profound and fundamentally playful at the same time, far from certainties and dangerous dogmas...



Tracklist:
1.01 - Laryssa Kim - Les Amants d'Osmium - 76 OS (2:15)
1.02 - Laryssa Kim - Tum Tum - Cuori In Tumulto (1:36)
1.03 - Laryssa Kim - Scegli Me - Contesa (5:29)
1.04 - Laryssa Kim - L'Attente - Auspicio (4:26)
1.05 - Laryssa Kim - Obsession - Indomita Mente (4:35)
1.06 - Laryssa Kim - Intimacy - Riserbo (4:07)
1.07 - Laryssa Kim - Voeu - Canto Votivo (2:04)
1.08 - Laryssa Kim - Prière à Chamuel - Supplica (3:49)
1.09 - Laryssa Kim - Blue Velvet - Fortezza Sacra (4:48)
1.10 - Laryssa Kim - Les Amants Transparents - 1H (3:33)
1.11 - Laryssa Kim - Ma Chi Sei - Ascoso (5:20)
1.12 - Laryssa Kim - La Vie Is Magic - Contezza (2:53)