Olicía – Out of the Blue [Compact Disc]

Genre boundaries have always been fluid for Olicía, the band of the two singers and multi-instrumentalists Fama M’Boup and Anna-Lucia Rupp. Their music ranges from fragile folk moments to pulsating pop, from avant-garde soul to spoken word and jazz, whilst always retaining a gently futuristic feel due to its unique form of creation. They use two synchronized loop stations and the two female voices at the center take turns leading the song. They layer, beatbox, harmonize, or expand into vast choirs. The instrumentation ranges from piano,  synths and looped vocal snippets to guitar and clarinet. The two women seem to practically override the constraints of loop-based music and create very direct songs with efficiency and elegance. They manage without preproduced backing tracks and always leave room for improvisation and chance.

While Olicía’s debut album “Liquid Lines” explored the boundaries of the individual song by creating two different versions of each of the 10 tracks, “Out of the Blue” is now an attempt to take a completely new look at their own art form, to connect their music with other art genres through dialogue and exchange.

For each song on “Out of the Blue”, there is a work of art by the same title, created in a close exchange process, functioning as an equal counterpart. The idea behind “Out of the Blue” is one of cross pollination, of continuous pings and pongs, of being inspired by one another and of learning from one one another in the process. Every song on it opens up a world of its own. At the same time, it looks into the parallel universe of incredibly talented and generous artists from fields such as film, design, painting, literature, and arts and crafts. The contributing artists are Dshamila Annina, Malene Glintborg, Katharina Haydeyan, Lisa Hoffmann, Claudia Kleiner, Gunther Kleinert, Sudabeh Mohafez, and Micha Steinwachs. Each of their works has its own space on the website of the band’s label o-cetera.com.