Laurel Halo / Phew

Detroit-born, Los Angeles-based composer, producer, musician and DJ Laurel Halo has succeeded time and time again in recent years in creating a distinctive aesthetic in a stylistically diverse oeuvre that encompasses pop, ambient, leftfield club, experimental electronica and film music. At Dampfzentrale Berne, the artist will present her latest album «Atlas», accompanied by cellist Leila Bordreuil.

Hiromi Moritani’s project Phew is a hidden gem in the canon of experimental music. From the waveless synth anthems of her 1981 self-titled debut to the poppy, shoe-gazing and industrial undertones of «Our Likeness» (1992) and the eerie, glowing drones of her more recent works «Vertigo KO» (2020) and «New Decade» (2021).

Laurel Halo’s fifth album, which the musician released in September 2023 on her own label Awe, combines a mixture of weightless jazz, orchestral and driving energies. Atlas is a collection of calm, delicate, minimalist and especially piano-based compositions that constantly bend the contemporary ambient mould. The contributions of multi-instrumentalist Coby Sey, cellist Lucy Railton, violinist James Underwood and experimental saxophonist Bendik Giske expand the filigree soundscape into a kind of ghostly orchestra.

In 1977, Japanese singer Hiromi Moritani (aka Phew) decided to book a long flight to London to see the Sex Pistols live. That was the inspiration she needed to form her own band, Aunt Sally, which released a single influential album before disbanding. But Moritani’s career was only just beginning: in 1980, she recorded her debut album together with Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit from Can in Conny Plank’s legendary Cologne studio. Since then, she has challenged listeners, working with members of Einstürzende Neubauten and artists such as Ryuichi Sakamoto, Bill Laswell and Jim O’Rourke. It was only a good decade ago that Phew turned into a purely solo project, becoming even more experimental and, above all, better. Her latest album New Decade was released in 2021 and deals with the concept of the lost future, mixing English and Japanese vocals with analogue synthesizers and jerky drum machine loops.