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LP
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MORR 145LP
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LP version. Includes download code. Berlin-based musician Masha Qrella's fifth album, Keys, finds her elegantly fusing disco-pop and songwriting. Written and produced by Qrella in her studio within one year, the album's 11 songs feature well-known elements of fragility, perfection, and understatement, while walking a fine line between laconic coolness and passionate, up-tempo melancholia. There is a new straightforwardness in how Qrella sings about break-ups, new beginnings, and keys; "Please don't give me your keys / 'Cause I don't wanna have to give them back again," goes the refrain of the title-track, which features deliberately sparse instrumentation unexpectedly interrupted by the noise of traffic and construction sites -- one of those little surprising twists that have always been crucial to Qrella's music. While her earlier solo albums relied on more electronic elements, stumbling beats, and sonic textures, Qrella now puts emphasis on her voice and songwriting. Every sort of shyness seems to have vanished. One gets the feeling that Qrella is breaking new personal ground on this album. Every song on Keys captures an immediate and open-hearted quality that Qrella has not quite revealed before. With this album, Masha Qrella creates a very distinct version of pop music, subtly channeling her love for Elliott Smith, Neil Young, AIR, and Metronomy but always staying true to herself.
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CD
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MORR 145CD
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Berlin-based musician Masha Qrella's fifth album, Keys, finds her elegantly fusing disco-pop and songwriting. Written and produced by Qrella in her studio within one year, the album's 11 songs feature well-known elements of fragility, perfection, and understatement, while walking a fine line between laconic coolness and passionate, up-tempo melancholia. There is a new straightforwardness in how Qrella sings about break-ups, new beginnings, and keys; "Please don't give me your keys / 'Cause I don't wanna have to give them back again," goes the refrain of the title-track, which features deliberately sparse instrumentation unexpectedly interrupted by the noise of traffic and construction sites -- one of those little surprising twists that have always been crucial to Qrella's music. While her earlier solo albums relied on more electronic elements, stumbling beats, and sonic textures, Qrella now puts emphasis on her voice and songwriting. Every sort of shyness seems to have vanished. One gets the feeling that Qrella is breaking new personal ground on this album. Every song on Keys captures an immediate and open-hearted quality that Qrella has not quite revealed before. With this album, Masha Qrella creates a very distinct version of pop music, subtly channeling her love for Elliott Smith, Neil Young, AIR, and Metronomy but always staying true to herself.
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7"
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ANOST 046EP
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After recording some killer cover versions of Bryan Ferry and Frederick Loewe, Masha now sings The Cure's second hit, "Boys Don't Cry." After more than 30 years of heavy indie-disco rotation, you might be sick of that song, but Masha's version is just too clever. First she adds a rhythmic Kelis-citation ("Trick Me"). This also brings an even greater gender twist to the lyrics, as it may be seen as a comment on Robert Smith's elaborate moaning. On the flip, the guitar work of James McNew (Yo La Tengo, Dump) adds some gentle funk to Masha's recent single "Fishing Buddies." Features silkscreened artwork.
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CD
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MORR 113CD
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Morr Music presents a new album by Masha Qrella, at long last. Indeed, it's been more than half a decade since the release of her last studio album Unsolved Remained, back in 2005. The only exception being Speak Low (MORR 091CD/LP), a collection of beautifully-rendered Kurt Weill and Frederick Loewe cover songs, released in 2009. Still, the legend of this mythical new album kept growing with every step Masha made -- or didn't make, to be exact. Analogies is well worth the wait. In times of digital culture, of having every type of information permanently at our disposal, it seems to be rather easy to write great songs even if you haven't got the chops or an interesting biography to draw inspiration from. That said, it is still hugely advantageous to have some kind of musical story to tell -- a case in point on this album. It simply shows how important it is to stay true to your roots, to your musical path, no matter how many years it might take you to get somewhere. The resulting sound, the confidence, the virtuosity of composition at work in these songs, their post-rock leanings, shimmering folk layers and hymnal pop gestures, are clearly not just references to something found on the Internet. They are the result of actual experience, years and years dedicated to actually playing and breathing music. It's just obvious, and you can hear it in every note and every melody on this album. Ever since the Berlin party heydays of the early '90s, Masha Qrella (and also her band Mina) has been part of the city's musical avant-garde; yet at the same time, she kept an eye on that one thing which has always been the very core and heart of pop music: the song itself. Analogies is essentially her take on pop music, sitting perfectly between folk, indie rock, and all the huge radio anthems decades past.
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LP
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MORR 113LP
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LP version. Morr Music presents a new album by Masha Qrella, at long last. Indeed, it's been more than half a decade since the release of her last studio album Unsolved Remained, back in 2005. The only exception being Speak Low (MORR 091CD/LP), a collection of beautifully-rendered Kurt Weill and Frederick Loewe cover songs, released in 2009. Still, the legend of this mythical new album kept growing with every step Masha made -- or didn't make, to be exact. Analogies is well worth the wait. In times of digital culture, of having every type of information permanently at our disposal, it seems to be rather easy to write great songs even if you haven't got the chops or an interesting biography to draw inspiration from. That said, it is still hugely advantageous to have some kind of musical story to tell -- a case in point on this album. It simply shows how important it is to stay true to your roots, to your musical path, no matter how many years it might take you to get somewhere. The resulting sound, the confidence, the virtuosity of composition at work in these songs, their post-rock leanings, shimmering folk layers and hymnal pop gestures, are clearly not just references to something found on the Internet. They are the result of actual experience, years and years dedicated to actually playing and breathing music. It's just obvious, and you can hear it in every note and every melody on this album. Ever since the Berlin party heydays of the early '90s, Masha Qrella (and also her band Mina) has been part of the city's musical avant-garde; yet at the same time, she kept an eye on that one thing which has always been the very core and heart of pop music: the song itself. Analogies is essentially her take on pop music, sitting perfectly between folk, indie rock, and all the huge radio anthems decades past.
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CD
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MORR 091CD
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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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LP
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MORR 091LP
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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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7"
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ANOST 013EP
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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 Komeït 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.
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2LP
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MORR 052LP
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Double LP version. Contains two bonus remixes by Henrik Johannson and Bus.
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CD
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MORR 052CD
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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.
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