SLEAP-E | Berlin Show @ Kulturhaus Insel

In the organizer's words:

Live:
SLEAP-E (IT)
-- Indie/Anti-Folk/Bossa Punk --
Kulturhaus Insel Berlin
Admission: 7 pm
Start: 8 pm

Sleap-e is reclaiming herself. The Italian singer-songwriter's second album, 8106, captures the spirit of play; the child-like instinct to pursue what you love without compromise - and here it is, that particular magic that rarely survives adulthood, remarkably intact. Though her sound has shifted from the tender bedroom pop of her 2020 EP Mellow and her 2022 debut album Pouty Lips which was bedecked with jubilant brass and Mediterranean rhythms, it's her self-belief which endures. 8106 is Sleap-e's most raucous, unpolished and playful offering to date, steeped in the influence of "egg-punk", an internet-grown genre which seeks to satirize the tropes of punk with its danceable irreverence. There is joy to be found, Asia Martina Morabito feels, in refusing to conform, and it has brought her closer to herself than ever before.

8106 was the number of the hotel room she felt confined to, alone and adrift from comfort when she was working away from home. Sometimes you have to be removed from something to realize how much you miss it. She decided to return home to Bologna, and there she began recording the album in residency at the Bronson Club: a hive of like-minded creatives and mentors who helped it take its final form. At home, her own music was played freely and instinctively - and with fun. The artwork for 8106 is by Noemi Vola, a prolific Bolognian illustrator and author who specializes in designs for children, which reflects the "funky, fairytale mood" of the record itself. "Poetry" is an ode to sharing halloumi fries with a close friend over literature, speaking to those particular moments and relationships in our lives which nourish us; "Leave My Bum Alone" arrives as an explosion of mischief and frivolity. It also leans into tenderness and sharp sincerity, and in the album's closing title track Asia speaks to herself: "It's about sadness and rage, but more than that, this need to live: to go away and change things - to love myself."