New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Singer, producer, multi-instrumentalist and artist
Eliza Bagg recently launched her new solo project Lisel, and her remarkable self-produced debut album entitled Angels on the Slope will be released on Luminelle on Friday. Ahead of its release, the album is streaming now exclusively via Hype Machine. Angels on the Slope effortlessly moves from gauzy and ethereal to distorted, beat-driven pop, and is an incredibly captivating debut effort that is not to be missed.
Drawing upon her vast musical experiences- her time as one-half of Pavo Pavo, her collaborations with the likes of Helado Negro and Julianna Barwick, and her work performing in legendary operas by Meredith Monk with the LA Philharmonic - Bagg masterfully blends her experimental, classical, avant garde and indie-pop expertise throughout Angels on the Slope. Always aiming to create immersive art that transports the listener "to a place where our everyday, familiar thoughts about the world don't quite fit exactly," Bagg has crafted a gorgeous record, grounded in specific, strange vocal sounds that form a diverse, otherwordly landscape and results in a singular debut that is not to be missed. Pre-order Angels on the Slope, out Friday, July 26th on Luminelle.
Lisel grew from Bagg's desire to turn inwards as a way to get in touch with her own sense of authenticity. "I had found space in the classical world that made sense for me," says Bagg, "but I realized I needed to make something that was truly mine, that sprung from my own voice." This led to a year-long writing and recording process, with Bagg waking up every morning to spend time alone with just a microphone and her computer.
"My main instrument is my voice, not a keyboard or a guitar, so I wanted it to be the genesis of every song," she says. Lisel meticulously constructed each track on Angels on the Slope, beginning with samples of her voice as the foundation, either by singing a note in a particular style or by manipulating them in order to create a vocal color that would be the defining feature of the song "I was trying to use the resources I had within me, within my body, to make something that feels true about the way we live our lives now, in 2019. That's why I wanted to focus on my voice-I wanted each song to be literally made out of me." And Bagg's voice is a true marvel: intimate and warm while also impossibly crystalline and heavenly, which Pitchfork once compared to "a lovelorn alien reaching out from the farthest reaches of the galaxy." It's a worthy instrument from which to construct a world.
With themes of self-exploration and becoming, the songs on Angels on the Slopevibrate with the joy of discovery, delighting in blurring together the organic and the digital, the ordinary and the uncanny. It's the sound of an artist looking to create a personal ecosystem, one teeming with color and movement, a place all her own.
