Martina Claussen - Verwoben (2020)

Martina Claussen has been active as a composer, vocal artist and Professor of Voice in Vienna for many years. After many collaborations and appearances on some excellent compilations she's arrived at her full debut album, a project we're very excited to be part of as Forwind reaches its thirtieth release.

Verwoben (Interwoven) is an engrossing, intricate album of electronics and electro-acoustics with Martina’s voice being the primary sound source for most of the compositions. The five tracks were crafted over several years of experiments, recordings and live performances before finding their final form, with Martina's production and sound design skills shining through in the innovative results.

Packed with movement and dynamics, Verwoben swerves between the apparent, abstract and engagingly abstruse via pensive electronics, contemporary rumblings and harsher sections all swirling around the home base of Martina’s voice, that always lends the album a warmth even as the sound moves further and further out into more shadowy and desolate spaces.

The visual aspect is a hugely important piece in the final presentation of the record. The final artwork - a mix of the unmissable physicality of Anastasia Pottinger’s photographs with stills from Connie Zenk’s stunning digital video for the title track - perfectly reflects the overall approach and mood of the record. There’s both a tension and bliss in Martina’s digitally manipulated ‘landscape of voices’, human bodies and expressions both evolving and distorting through time. It’s poignant, joyful, sorrowful and provoking.

Martina’s ambition for Verwoben was to ‘open up a wide variety of associations and new acoustic spaces through a dialogue between voice, sound objects and electronics’. That mission has been accomplished with one of the most adept and inquisitive works we’ve had the pleasure of releasing. Grab your headphones for an entrancing listen.

Verwoben will be available as a limited edition Digipak and in all digital formats.