Olicía & Caoilfhionn Rose

In the organizer's words:

Olicía is the band of the two singers and multi-instrumentalists Fama M'Boup and Anna-Lucia Rupp. Driven by female voices, they share lead vocals and other musical elements, layering, beatboxing, harmonizing and growing sounds that are partly in the now, partly in the future. The instrumentation ranges from synths and looped vocal snippets to guitar and clarinet. Genre boundaries have always been fluid for Olicía - fragile folk moments, pulsating pop, avant-garde soul, spoken word, jazz... Olicía's music always has a gently futuristic feel due to its unique form of creation using two synchronized loop stations. The two seem to practically override the constraints (and lengths) of loop-based music and create very direct songs with efficiency and elegance, which do without backing tracks and leave room for improvisation and chance.

In 2021, Olicía released their debut album Liquid Lines - a double album that juxtaposed each song on it in two completely different versions. Since then, they have released solo albums(in June) and band projects(NOUK, cocotá) on their own label o-cetera . They were part of Sophie Hunger 's live line-up , released music with Dota Kehr and Kat Frankie and contributed a song to the soundtrack of Robert Gwisdek 's directorial debut (Käptn Peng), but above all, the two have spent more than two years working on the songs and works that are now collected on Out of the Blue. While Liquid Lines explored the boundaries of the individual song, Out of the Blue is now an attempt to take a completely new look at their own art form, to connect their own music with other art genres through dialog and exchange.
For every song on this album there is a work of art with the same title, which functions as a counterpart and was created in a close exchange process. A result of continuous pings and pongs until both sides felt they had found a result. Out of the Blue is therefore not what is often referred to as a "one-piece album". It is rather the opposite. Each song on it opens up its own world and at the same time looks into the parallel universe of another artist from fields such as film, design, painting, literature and arts and crafts. Each pair of works has its own space on the website of the band's own label o-cetera.com.
If one were to single out a central song, it would be the anthemic 'Finally' - a collaboration with the author Sudabeh Mohafez, who is admired by both musicians. 'Finally' is an evocation of female self-empowerment and resistance, but also a self-portrait within a long cultural tradition of women that looks at both facets of being 'out of the blue': the unexpected and unanticipated, but also stepping out of dejection and oppression towards autonomy and a powerful breath of relief. The accompanying prose text is both the basis of the song lyrics and part of the album artwork and can be read as a manifesto for this very unique album.

Caoilfhionn Rose

With her third album Constellation, which is once again being released on the Gondwana label, Caoilfhionn Rose from Manchester has grown up as an artist. She has dug deep to find experimental new ways to express her wonder at the beauty of nature, her love of music in all its diversity and her belief in restorative powers.
Caoilfhionn (pronounced 'Keelin') has found a voice that is at once ancient and modern, fearlessly exploring contemporary technologies to transform traditional song for the mid-20s.
The ten tracks on Constellation feel rooted in knowledge of folk, jazz and all the 20th century classics, yet they seem to create a magical, otherworldly space of their own imagination, mixing Caoilfhionn's central piano with synthesizers and pitting a live rhythm section and saxophone embellishments against ambient samples and forward-thinking production techniques. Confident, exploratory and often breathtakingly sublime, this incredible album heralds Caoilfhionn Rose's arrival as a new creative force for 2024.

Caoilfhionn has always been deeply committed to music. When an illness in her late teens delayed the start of her music studies at Newcastle University, she used the time constructively. She did a diploma in music production and sound engineering at the Manchester MIDI School (now the School of Electronic Music), which focused heavily on electronic music and gave her a progressive attitude to sound manipulation. "It was the best decision," she says, "because I learned how to use Logic, from the basics to exploration, and also some live sound recording. It was actually a course for DJs, but I started trying to blend electronics with my more folky, traditional background."
While studying music at university in Newcastle, she played around with sound experiments and field recordings, releasing tracks online under the pseudonym Audrey Daydreamer and eventually an EP under her own name on Soundcloud and Bandcamp. "That's how I came to Gondwana," she explains, "because Matthew (Halsall, the label's boss) found the EP and realized that I now live in Didsbury, close to where he lives. He came to see me play at a café called The Art of Tea, and afterwards he asked me if I wanted to record for Gondwana."

Constellation features contributions from Matthew Halsall's rhythm section, drummer Alan Taylor and bassist Gavin Barras, as well as Jordan Smart of Mammal Hands, whose smooth saxophone adds a very special touch to most of the songs. Also making guest appearances are former Cinematic Orchestra member John Ellis, who blissfully hits the keys at the end of 'Fall Into Place', and producer Aaron Wood, who adds a pleasing texture with a series of ambient samples in 'Rainfall'.
"I love being open to collaborations," enthuses Rose, "and the record is a collage that brings all these influences, sounds and players together and is experimental in its production."
And so Caoilfhionn Rose's collage of different influences and inspirations, players and processes came together to create a wonderful and quietly powerful work that is a testament to artistic adventure, to improvisation and hard work, to trusting our connection to nature, to other people and to music itself.