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CD
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KALLISTA 002CD
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Carla dal Forno resurfaces with the news of plans to release her third album, Come Around, via her own Kallista Records imprint. Now, based in the township of Castlemaine, Central Victoria, the Australian artist returns self-assured and firmly settled within the dense eucalypt bushlands. Dal Forno grapples with ideas of home, disorder and insomnia in the swift pop structures of her DIY/post-punk forebearers such as Young Marble Giants, Virginia Astley, and Broadcast. Three years since the launch of her label, Kallista Records, dal Forno finds stability in Castlemaine (pop. 6,750), her third home city in as many albums. After nearly a decade of moving, recording and touring out of Berlin and London, Come Around embodies a newfound solitude born of/in elemental pop hooks and enlightened songwriting. The title track, "Come Around," offers the best example of this confident, fresh candor. It's an elegant invite into dal Forno's sharp new focus beckoning old friends, relationships and audiences into her resettled home. This meandering pop hit strikes between the melodic simplicity of Anna Domino and YMG and the arrangement hooks of The Cannanes and Movietone, capturing dal Forno at her most welcoming with arms wide open. Other tracks like "Mind You're On" recalls the bass driven heft of dal Forno's previous work but where past albums projected the pastoral idyll from the urban jungles of Berlin and London, the lyricism and production on Come Around embody her current lived experience in the Australian regions where space, strong bonds and solitude are in high supply. Returning to rekindle relationships with people and places and joining in trysts amidst the foreboding badlands cuts through the whole record, as on "The Garden of Earthly Delights," a cover of The United States of America's 1968 track. There is joy if you look for it but, as dal Forno warns on "Caution": "I sell caution word of you." Mistrust and doubt are not completely vanquished. Having embarked on such a radical physical and creative journey since the last record, dal Forno lays bare the passing of time and the oscillating waves of energy and ennui that go with it. This is plain to see on "Stay Awake" and instrumentals like "Deep Sleep" and "Autumn," which gives rise to anxiety and insomnia in her new sunburnt home. Yet "Slumber" offers a glimmer of respite sitting within the chaotic circus of production that channels Kendra Smith, General Strike, and The Flying Lizards. This track, a duet with English artist, Thomas Bush, searches for solace in the arms of another. Nothing is left unsaid on Come Around. Having finally found limitless time and space, dal Forno does well not to waste any bit of it.
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LP
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KALLISTA 002LP
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2023 restock; LP version. Carla dal Forno resurfaces with the news of plans to release her third album, Come Around, via her own Kallista Records imprint. Now, based in the township of Castlemaine, Central Victoria, the Australian artist returns self-assured and firmly settled within the dense eucalypt bushlands. Dal Forno grapples with ideas of home, disorder and insomnia in the swift pop structures of her DIY/post-punk forebearers such as Young Marble Giants, Virginia Astley, and Broadcast. Three years since the launch of her label, Kallista Records, dal Forno finds stability in Castlemaine (pop. 6,750), her third home city in as many albums. After nearly a decade of moving, recording and touring out of Berlin and London, Come Around embodies a newfound solitude born of/in elemental pop hooks and enlightened songwriting. The title track, "Come Around," offers the best example of this confident, fresh candor. It's an elegant invite into dal Forno's sharp new focus beckoning old friends, relationships and audiences into her resettled home. This meandering pop hit strikes between the melodic simplicity of Anna Domino and YMG and the arrangement hooks of The Cannanes and Movietone, capturing dal Forno at her most welcoming with arms wide open. Other tracks like "Mind You're On" recalls the bass driven heft of dal Forno's previous work but where past albums projected the pastoral idyll from the urban jungles of Berlin and London, the lyricism and production on Come Around embody her current lived experience in the Australian regions where space, strong bonds and solitude are in high supply. Returning to rekindle relationships with people and places and joining in trysts amidst the foreboding badlands cuts through the whole record, as on "The Garden of Earthly Delights," a cover of The United States of America's 1968 track. There is joy if you look for it but, as dal Forno warns on "Caution": "I sell caution word of you." Mistrust and doubt are not completely vanquished. Having embarked on such a radical physical and creative journey since the last record, dal Forno lays bare the passing of time and the oscillating waves of energy and ennui that go with it. This is plain to see on "Stay Awake" and instrumentals like "Deep Sleep" and "Autumn," which gives rise to anxiety and insomnia in her new sunburnt home. Yet "Slumber" offers a glimmer of respite sitting within the chaotic circus of production that channels Kendra Smith, General Strike, and The Flying Lizards. This track, a duet with English artist, Thomas Bush, searches for solace in the arms of another. Nothing is left unsaid on Come Around. Having finally found limitless time and space, dal Forno does well not to waste any bit of it.
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LP
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KALLISTA 001LP
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2023 restock. LP version. Carla dal Forno announces her second full-length album, Look Up Sharp, on her own Kallista records. Dal Forno beckons a bold new era in her peerless output pushing her dub-damaged DIY dispatches to the limits of flawless dream-pop. In a transformative move towards crystal clear vocals and sharpened production, Look Up Sharp is an evolutionary leap from the thick fog and pastoral stillness of her Blackest Ever Black missives, You Know What It's Like (BLACKEST 015CD/LP, 2016) and The Garden EP (BLACKEST 068EP, 2017). Three years since her plain-speaking debut album, the Melbourne-via-Berlin artist finds herself absorbed in London's sprawling mess. The small-town dreams and inertia that preoccupied dal Forno's first album have dissolved into the chaotic city, its shifting identities, far-flung surroundings and blank faces. Look Up Sharp is the story of this life in flux, longing for intimacy, falling short and embracing the unfamiliar. In her own territory between plaintive pop, folk and post-punk dal Forno conjures the ghosts of AC Marias, Virginia Astley, and Broadcast through her brushwork of art-damaged fx and spectral atmospheres. The first half of the record is filled with dubbed-out humid bass lines, which tether stoned hazes of psychedelic synth work, as on "Took A Long Time" and "No Trace". These are contrasted with songs like "I'm Conscious" and "So Much Better" that channel the lilting power of YMG and are clear sequels-in-waiting to dead-eyed classics like "Fast Moving Cars". The second half begins with the feverish bass and meandering melody of "Don't Follow Me", which takes The Cure's "A Forest" as its conceptual springboard. It's the clearest lyrical example since "The Garden" of dal Forno's unmatched ability to unpick the masculine void of post-punk and new wave nostalgia to reflect contemporary nuance. Look Up Sharp reaches its satisfying conclusion with "Push On" -- dal Forno's most explicit foray into an undiscovered trip hop universe between Massive Attack and Tracey Thorn. Adding further depth to Look Up Sharp are the instrumentals, which flow seamlessly between the vocal-led pieces. "Hype Sleep" and "Heart of Hearts" drink from the same stream as The Flying Lizard's dubbed-out madness and the vivid purple sunsets of Eno's Another Green World (1975). While "Creep Out of Bed" and "Leaving For Japan" funnel the fourth-world psychedelia of Cyclobe's industrial-folk into the vortex of Nico's The Marble Index (1968). A deeply personal but infinitely relatable album its many surfaces are complex but authentic, enduring but imperfect, hard-edged but delicate.
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CD
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KALLISTA 001CD
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Carla dal Forno announces her second full-length album, Look Up Sharp, on her own Kallista records. Dal Forno beckons a bold new era in her peerless output pushing her dub-damaged DIY dispatches to the limits of flawless dream-pop. In a transformative move towards crystal clear vocals and sharpened production, Look Up Sharp is an evolutionary leap from the thick fog and pastoral stillness of her Blackest Ever Black missives, You Know What It's Like (BLACKEST 015CD/LP, 2016) and The Garden EP (BLACKEST 068EP, 2017). Three years since her plain-speaking debut album, the Melbourne-via-Berlin artist finds herself absorbed in London's sprawling mess. The small-town dreams and inertia that preoccupied dal Forno's first album have dissolved into the chaotic city, its shifting identities, far-flung surroundings and blank faces. Look Up Sharp is the story of this life in flux, longing for intimacy, falling short and embracing the unfamiliar. In her own territory between plaintive pop, folk and post-punk dal Forno conjures the ghosts of AC Marias, Virginia Astley, and Broadcast through her brushwork of art-damaged fx and spectral atmospheres. The first half of the record is filled with dubbed-out humid bass lines, which tether stoned hazes of psychedelic synth work, as on "Took A Long Time" and "No Trace". These are contrasted with songs like "I'm Conscious" and "So Much Better" that channel the lilting power of YMG and are clear sequels-in-waiting to dead-eyed classics like "Fast Moving Cars". The second half begins with the feverish bass and meandering melody of "Don't Follow Me", which takes The Cure's "A Forest" as its conceptual springboard. It's the clearest lyrical example since "The Garden" of dal Forno's unmatched ability to unpick the masculine void of post-punk and new wave nostalgia to reflect contemporary nuance. Look Up Sharp reaches its satisfying conclusion with "Push On" -- dal Forno's most explicit foray into an undiscovered trip hop universe between Massive Attack and Tracey Thorn. Adding further depth to Look Up Sharp are the instrumentals, which flow seamlessly between the vocal-led pieces. "Hype Sleep" and "Heart of Hearts" drink from the same stream as The Flying Lizard's dubbed-out madness and the vivid purple sunsets of Eno's Another Green World (1975). While "Creep Out of Bed" and "Leaving For Japan" funnel the fourth-world psychedelia of Cyclobe's industrial-folk into the vortex of Nico's The Marble Index (1968). A deeply personal but infinitely relatable album its many surfaces are complex but authentic, enduring but imperfect, hard-edged but delicate.
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7"
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KALLISTA 001EP
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Carla dal Forno launches her own label, Kallista Records, with her first original single in over a year, So Much Better. The widespread success of her debut album You Know What It's Like (BLACKEST 015CD/LP, 2016) and The Garden EP (BLACKEST 068EP, 2017) has seen dal Forno spearhead the latter years of the Blackest Ever Black vanguard. Now the London-based Australian artist turns her attention to releasing original work on her own label, Kallista Records. This two-track 7-inch record begins a bold year for dal Forno, who takes her lone kosmische misanthropy onto fertile new ground. The A-side single, "So Much Better", sees dal Forno step out from the shadows of emotional ambiguity into the vulnerable territory of anecdotal song-writing. Lyrics that echo the irrational passions of love scorned, in truth reveal a self-assured artist confessing to resentment which propels her. Here is dal Forno chiding herself in the mirror while excoriating an old infatuate with a vocal timbre that sits among the giants: the lilting power of Alison Statton, the mystic shamanism of Una Baines, and the post-punk cabaret of Vivien Goldman. The sparse production on both sides springs from the soft-pedalled cassette of covers, Top of the Pops, which dal Forno self-released last year (CARLA 001CS, 2018). Though the raw, dubbed-out vision takes a back seat on "So Much Better", overshadowed by dal Forno's fork-tongued lyrics, it is heightened on "Fever Walk" with acoustic drum racks ricocheting off fizzing drones, pastoral synth textures and meandering melody in the way of Broadcast, Flying Lizards, and Portishead. But the illusion of wide-open spaces belies an oppressive, hysteria-inducing humidity swelling from the studio vision of her past instrumentals like "Dragon's Breath" and "Italian Cinema". And with a nod to her old band, F ingers, dal Forno's voice-as-instrument hacks like a machete through her endless jungle of anxiety. This two track 7-inch, the object of a new existence, reflects dal Forno's life in London working at Low Company record store and her monthly radio show on NTS. All in with the history and tradition of British post-punk and independent music, she strides boldly into the abyss. So much better is yet to come...
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Cassette
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CARLA 001CS
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Carla Dal Forno offers Top Of The Pops, a self-released cassette disclosing six songs of sultry pop devotion. This late-spring cassette of cover songs now gets the wider autumnal release it deserves, showcasing the full range of Dal Forno's virtuous taste, style and production in her distinct post-punk, pop (but) minimalist sensibility. Not without cheek, the wink-and-a-nod blue-film bawdiness of "Lay Me Down" (Renee) and "Give Me Back My Man" (The B-52s) are complemented by the earnest ballads of "A Silver Key Can Open A Lock Somewhere" (Liliput) and The Fates's "No Romance." Kiwi Animal's "Blue Morning" finally gets a recorded release as well. This cosmic inner dialogue of love lost is matched only by the penultimate track, "Summertime Sadness" which is the best example of how devastatingly personal a pop song truly can be. It's all emphasized by Dal Forno's sparse production which, as with each of these six songs, brings her vocal interpretations to the fore. Pearl blue cassette wrapped in color-printed J-cards and with color sticker inlays. Artwork designed by Carla Dal Forno.
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CD
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BLACKEST 015CD
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Carla dal Forno presents her debut solo album You Know What It's Like, following time in cult Melbourne group Mole House and an earlier association with Blackest Ever Black as a member of F ingers and Tarcar. Her voice is an extraordinary instrument: both disarmingly conversational and glacially detached. It has something of the bedsit urbanity of Anna Domino, Marine Girls, Antena, or Helen Johnstone - stoned and deadpan - but it can also summon a gothic intensity that Nico or Kendra Smith would approve of. This voice is the perfect embodiment of dal Forno's emotionally ambiguous songs: their lyrics rooted in the everyday, observing and exposing a series of uncomfortable truths. "Fast Moving Cars" and "What You Gonna Do Now?" weigh up claustrophobia against loneliness, inertia against acceleration, doubling-down versus taking-off; the title track acknowledges the provisional nature of love and "real" intimacy, then decides to brave it anyway. By the time the startlingly sparse "The Same Reply" arrives, the sense of dejection is absolute. The vocal-led pieces are interspersed with richly evocative instrumentals. Smothered in tape-hiss and reverb, the seasick synthesizer miniatures "Italian Cinema" and "Dragon Breath" channel the twilit DIY whimsy of Flaming Tunes and Call Back The Giants. The drum machine and bassline of "DB Rip" are pure Chicago house, but then its dark choral drones nod to Dalis Car's dreams of blood-spattered Cornwall stone. "Dry The Rain" drinks from a stream of moon-musick that runs through Coil, In Gowan Ring, Third Ear Band, even the Raincoats's Odyshape (1981).
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LP
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BLACKEST 015LP
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2022 restock; LP version. Carla dal Forno presents her debut solo album You Know What It's Like, following time in cult Melbourne group Mole House and an earlier association with Blackest Ever Black as a member of F ingers and Tarcar. Her voice is an extraordinary instrument: both disarmingly conversational and glacially detached. It has something of the bedsit urbanity of Anna Domino, Marine Girls, Antena, or Helen Johnstone - stoned and deadpan - but it can also summon a gothic intensity that Nico or Kendra Smith would approve of. This voice is the perfect embodiment of dal Forno's emotionally ambiguous songs: their lyrics rooted in the everyday, observing and exposing a series of uncomfortable truths. "Fast Moving Cars" and "What You Gonna Do Now?" weigh up claustrophobia against loneliness, inertia against acceleration, doubling-down versus taking-off; the title track acknowledges the provisional nature of love and "real" intimacy, then decides to brave it anyway. By the time the startlingly sparse "The Same Reply" arrives, the sense of dejection is absolute. The vocal-led pieces are interspersed with richly evocative instrumentals. Smothered in tape-hiss and reverb, the seasick synthesizer miniatures "Italian Cinema" and "Dragon Breath" channel the twilit DIY whimsy of Flaming Tunes and Call Back The Giants. The drum machine and bassline of "DB Rip" are pure Chicago house, but then its dark choral drones nod to Dalis Car's dreams of blood-spattered Cornwall stone. "Dry The Rain" drinks from a stream of moon-musick that runs through Coil, In Gowan Ring, Third Ear Band, even the Raincoats's Odyshape (1981).
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