WL//WH Track Of The Day ORPHIA feat. VERMONT
Whilst living in London in the mid-90s, I somehow experienced a dual feeling of all-consuming energy, thrilling and euphoric, yet profoundly destructive and alienating at the same time; evidently it is a place that oozes contrasting vibes to some.
Geneva-based Swiss musician Orphia follows up last April’s 6-track EP, “Beau Discours”, via local independent label Les Disques Magnétiques, with a dark and mesmerizing new single, “River Lea”, in collaboration with fellow Geneva vocalist and self-taught painter Vermont.
“Emerged in a single, lightning-fast session where tempo and atmosphere surfaced naturally”, “River Lea” is a poetic metaphor with a double-edged text, blending verses written by Vermont‘s mother at twenty with her own words, where pain and hope, past and present, converge to reflect on a romantic love/hate relationship with the city of London that mirrors the author’s inner struggle with self.
Stark and visceral introspection filled with haunting gloom, as it unfolds on a sober, mechanical rhythmical skeleton of sharp, reverberated surgical beats along a broody floor of bass lines, surrounded by the obsessive metronomic reiterations of ghostly synth stabs and desolate flute-like drifting melodies atop deadened female spoken words, radiating and layering with cold, eerie echoes, swathed in taunting and alienated swirling off-kilter frequencies.
Keep up with Orphia:
photo by @claraker
