Maria da Rocha

Unrest is a word that comes to mind listening to Maria da Rocha new instalment “nolastingname”. She’s been around for a few years, living between Lisbon, Berlin and Stockholm, releasing records with Maria W. Horn (“Pink”, 2015) or on her own (“Beetroot & Other Stories”, 2018). She studied classical music (violin) but her solo musical career steps away from it, putting her foot down on electronic and experimental music.

“nolastingname” was recorded in Stockholm’s Elektronmusikstudion EMS and mastered by Andreas Tilliander, pushing the bass sound to the limit of distortion. It’s not farfetched to think of this piece as a dance music piece or a freeform industrial composition that stretches to different understandings of what industrial means: drone, electro, experimental, noise. In these 32 minutes a lot happens.

Recorded with her violin and a Buchla, Maria da Rocha starts quietly with the violin and then she moves quickly to the electronics, creating vast and opens spaces that have no ceiling. She lets her music breathe and expand in a very unsettling way. She traps you in this infinite space, and it is as absurd as it sounds. It’s that immense space that becomes claustrophobic sometimes, creates anxiety and leaves you on your toes. And when it reaches the limit, it releases extreme beauty. Are we allowed to say that this one is something unique, special? Because it is.