Cucina Povera

Maria Rossi graces Vladimir Ivkovic’s Offen Music with a special new round of plasmic vocal incantations. This stuff works like a book of spells, we tell you.  Descending from her cloud base somewhere above Glasgow, Rossi presents her most succinct suite of tunes in ‘Seesteyttää’ after a handful of progressively tight and impressive releases with Night School and Primordial Void since 2019. Her sound is now so familiar it feels like she’s been around much longer, channelling to our minds the layered vulnerability of Grouper and the arcane wonder of the Cocteaus, but with a contemporary concision that loosely places her in precious zones also shared by Teresa Winter and Orphan Fairytale. 

  The four songs here are dense but deeply enchanting, eliding inspirations from Finnish folk via rippling rhythmelodic synths and percussion, and subtlest vocal processing, to sound something like devotional music for an ambient love cult. Somewhere between the plaintive sway of ‘Walthamstow Suokellot,’ the chiming bliss pop of ‘Rushmoren Sipulihoyryt Saniaiset,’ and the ice cave ambience of ‘Selkeammat Vedet’ and ‘Taivaankappaleet.’ we ascended to a higher plane... (Boomkat)