A travelogue that unites physical and inner space, a series of trance states rendered in vivid colour, a delirious portal into the ether. Marlene Ribeiro’s debut for Rocket Recordings and first album under her own name is all of this and much more. Toquei No Sol is a fresh new chapter for this unique artist, by far the most melodic and transcendent outing yet for her hypnotic dreampop This is only the latest release in a long history of sonic experimentation for Marlene, which includes her previous work as Negra Branca and as a member of GNOD, not to mention collaborations with Valentina Magaletti and Thurston Moore. Toquei No Sol is also a record with a very distinctive and potent sense of place, paradoxically despite having been woven together from recordings made in Ireland, Wales, Portugal, Madeira and Salford. Marlene’s fleet-footed approach to melody rings through even as the tracks conjure visions of heat-hazes, meditative spaces and late-night epiphanies. Although listeners may hear echoes of the loop-driven psychedelia of Panda Bear’s Person Pitch or the incantatory ululations of Pocahaunted in these beguiling soundscapes and magick-strewn mantras, the truth is that the aesthetic here is very much Marlene’s alone. “It’s all a big misty haze of nostalgia, playfulness, self-reflection nd hopefulness” is what Marlene reckons herself. Yet Toquei No Sol is also a transporting vision from an artist both returning to her roots and looking out to new celestial horizons.
01. Quatro Palavras
02. Sangue De Lua De Lobo
03. Toquei No Sol
04. You Do It
05. Forever
06. What It Is
