Browse by Artist: QRELLA, MASHA

Artist:	QRELLA, MASHA
Title:	Don't Stop The Dance/Saturday Night
Label:	A NUMBER OF SMALL THINGS (GERMANY)
Format:	7"
Price:	$6.50
Catalog #:	ANOST 013EP

Released in 2006. Famous and familiar songs: Brian Ferry's "Don't Stop The Dance" on the one side, and "Saturday Night" from the Berlin-based duo Komeīt on the other. Ferry's smooth declaration of love with its charismatic short interruptions are also typical of Masha Qrella's music. The arrangement and production is precise, transparent, and interwoven in a complex way. "Saturday Night" charms with an emphatic closeness instead of the vibrating coolness of side A. Take me to the places that I've never seen, indeed.

Artist:	QRELLA, MASHA
Title:	Luck
Label:	MONIKA (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.50
Catalog #:	MONIKA 028CD

"It's here now, totally out of the blue: The first solo-album titled Luck by Contriva guitarist/bass player and Mina keyboarder Masha Qrella. On Luck, Masha Qrella is following some of her own concepts with even greater care. And the songs turned out as brightly beautiful and restrained passionate as her voice sounds. On the surface you can hear a production with soul and skill, that sometimes breaks a drum loop unevenly above the knee, that indulges in one gap or another and that leaves a note where it has been dropped. The tracks that first sound roughly put together in a way common in hip hop, turn out to be merely the gruff medium for the more airy song structures that they transport. There is (next to Mina and Contriva) as much Elliot Smith and Robert Wyatt in them, as the production opens up associations with Jim O`Rourke and Peaches. The instruments bass, guitar, drums and keyboards are mostly played by Masha herself and hint to the sound of a band. But the impression the songs make oscillates between that of the organically grown and that of being highly constructed by the exceptional details of the production."

Artist:	QRELLA, MASHA
Title:	Unsolved Remained
Label:	MORR MUSIC (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$14.00
Catalog #:	MORR 052CD

Unsolved Remained is Masha Qrella's second solo album. When Luck came out, Masha already represented
       an indispensable presence, attitude and a distinctive sound within the Berlin music scene, as guitarist/bassist of the
       melancholic instrumental band Contriva and as keyboardist of the equally wordless, but more hyper Mina.
       Meanwhile, she co-founded NMFarner, another band, and was involved in two more releases. She played many concerts
       and went on tour frequently. And somehow, in the studio, at home between tours, at the sound check, working on remixes
       and after her concerts, Masha wrote her solo project, the intense, warm, rough, playful, and at times even bitter
       Unsolved Remained, which goes a couple of steps further than her debut. Compared to her other projects, Masha solo
       is mostly concerned with amplifying those aspects of her musical output that don't originate in the dynamics of a band,
       but make audible a feeling of the private. Here memories, hopes, disappointments, joy and regret are translated into
       songs, which sometimes are concrete enough to be intersubjectively comprehensible, but often point poetically into the
       intimacy of the singing voice and cannot be decoded directly, only be felt with intuitively. A dialogue emerges between
       Masha and the listener, between the "I" and
       the "you" of her lyrics, between her doubled voices on the two poles of the stereo panorama. And the question of how far
       the person of the songwriter reaches into the songs, how much she hides in them. When listening to Unsolved
       Remained closely it becomes apparent how elegantly attention towards the smallest details in sound is coupled with a
       feeling for the emotional impact of the songs. Of course, this impact originates exactly in the delicate production, the
       complex rhythm programming, the sometimes intentionally rough, mostly subtle use of effects, sounds, rooms and the
       accentuated guitars between acoustic and noise. Still, the songs remain more important than any obvious demonstration of
       (plentifully available) production skills. Also electronic and acoustic are no antagonisms that need to be reconciled,
       they are equally valuable means of expression. Unsolved Remained is sophisticated in the most positive and
       experimental sense of the word. Masha also added other musicians on this album: in addition to Norman Nitzsche who
       is responsible for the recording and production of this album, some room on this record was handed over to other musical
       voices as well. The snapping and crackling rhythm track on "Vertical Destination" was programmed by Berlin
       sound/visual-collective Rechenzentrum. Similarly, the laconically dragged out backing track of "I Can't Tell" was
       created in the laboratory of Henrik Johansson. Finally, in the four-and-a-half minute long "C.Bones," a sample
       from Iso68 finds itself respectfully integrated into the logic of Qrella's songwriting. Unsolved Remained
       uniquely continues to formulate Masha Qrella's world of sound, warmer, more confident and multi-layered than its
       predecessor, with a production that gives these 11 songs proper density as well as space.

Artist:	QRELLA, MASHA
Title:	Speak Low - Loewe and Weill In Exile
Label:	MORR MUSIC (GERMANY)
Format:	CD
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	MORR 091CD

In October 2007, indie-pop chanteuse Masha Qrella (Contriva, Mina, Nmfarner) was asked by Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) to put together an evening's performance as part of the "New York-Berlin" celebrations to mark the venue's 50th anniversary. Under the heading Broadway - Cradle of Popular Music, the challenge was to work with and find new approaches to the compositions of Kurt Weill and Frederick Loewe, two giants of Broadway who had their origins in Berlin. Speak Low -- Loewe and Weill In Exile is the live studio recording of these new interpretations of Broadway classics, with Qrella lending her supremely mellow style for a completely new pop take on familiar and well-covered material. Detlef Diederichsen, the curator of the series of events comments, "I wanted to choose a Berlin artist to work on this project who you wouldn't really expect to be involved in something like this -- and who would thus be able to judge Weill and Loewe's output for themselves. I wanted someone who had the technical ability to take on these songs which are sometimes quite sophisticated, particularly compared to today's indie-pop songs. Masha Qrella ... and her musical partners have really succeeded in arranging and playing the Weill/Loewe originals in such a way that you'd think the musicians had just come up with them themselves -- in other words, they have succeeded in making the songs their own! They also avoid the drama and theatricality that almost every other artist so far has obviously felt compelled to employ, and have managed to maintain the laconic, melancholy atmosphere that has pervaded their other albums up to now. A listener who didn't know in advance who wrote this material would probably say that these songs were her own compositions." This is Qrella with a fully-formed band and standards like "September Song," which has almost been covered to death, comes alive again here; and the version of "Speak Low" by the The Four Freshmen is also no longer necessarily the definitive version of the song for the rest of eternity. And these aren't merely just cloying covers by an indie artist trying to legitimize the scope of their talent through cutesy chops. Qrella and her band tastefully and effortlessly makes visible the hidden line that quite possibly has been connecting Broadway and indie-pop all this time.

Artist:	QRELLA, MASHA
Title:	Speak Low - Loewe and Weill In Exile
Label:	MORR MUSIC (GERMANY)
Format:	LP
Price:	$15.50
Catalog #:	MORR 091LP

LP version with poster. In October 2007, indie-pop chanteuse Masha Qrella (Contriva, Mina, Nmfarner) was asked by Berlin's Haus der Kulturen der Welt (House of World Cultures) to put together an evening's performance as part of the "New York-Berlin" celebrations to mark the venue's 50th anniversary. Under the heading Broadway - Cradle of Popular Music, the challenge was to work with and find new approaches to the compositions of Kurt Weill and Frederick Loewe, two giants of Broadway who had their origins in Berlin. Speak Low -- Loewe and Weill In Exile is the live studio recording of these new interpretations of Broadway classics, with Qrella lending her supremely mellow style for a completely new pop take on familiar and well-covered material. Detlef Diederichsen, the curator of the series of events comments, "I wanted to choose a Berlin artist to work on this project who you wouldn't really expect to be involved in something like this -- and who would thus be able to judge Weill and Loewe's output for themselves. I wanted someone who had the technical ability to take on these songs which are sometimes quite sophisticated, particularly compared to today's indie-pop songs. Masha Qrella ... and her musical partners have really succeeded in arranging and playing the Weill/Loewe originals in such a way that you'd think the musicians had just come up with them themselves -- in other words, they have succeeded in making the songs their own! They also avoid the drama and theatricality that almost every other artist so far has obviously felt compelled to employ, and have managed to maintain the laconic, melancholy atmosphere that has pervaded their other albums up to now. A listener who didn't know in advance who wrote this material would probably say that these songs were her own compositions." This is Qrella with a fully-formed band and standards like "September Song," which has almost been covered to death, comes alive again here; and the version of "Speak Low" by the The Four Freshmen is also no longer necessarily the definitive version of the song for the rest of eternity. And these aren't merely just cloying covers by an indie artist trying to legitimize the scope of their talent through cutesy chops. Qrella and her band tastefully and effortlessly makes visible the hidden line that quite possibly has been connecting Broadway and indie-pop all this time.

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