Chloe Lula - Oneiris (2024)

Berlin based electronic musician and cellist Chloe Lula presents the LP Oneiris.

Having studied the cello at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and attended music schools up until the age of 18, Chloe gave up her ultra-strict regime of classical training, realising that she saw no future in it for herself — instead immersing herself in community radio, experimental music and techno. Chloe went on to tour the world as a techno DJ and producer, while working as a music journalist in parallel.

It was through journalism that Chloe had the opportunity to meet and interview artists like Hildur Guðnadóttir, Max Richter and Yair Elazar Glotman. Inspired by the possibility of exploring approaches informed by electronic and electro acoustic music, and missing the tactile experience and intimacy of instruments, she felt herself drawn back to her formative instrument.

For Chloe, there was an intuitive, associative, dream logic to going back to the cello. It became a totem for the things that exist beyond the periphery of her conscious mind and memory — a bridge between the past and the present, and a conduit for half-forgotten memories and emotions. This was a process that became mirrored in a desire to reconnect with exploring natural environments as a counterpoint to the architecture of clubs and electronic music.

For Chloe, as for many people, discovering electronic music represented the possibility of total immersion in another world of iconoclastic possibilities, and with that a rejection of her past. Focusing on the cello as the primary instrument in her musical practice has forced a confrontation with all that she left behind. To reject something is inevitably to be haunted by it, and this record represents both a confrontation with the haunting quality of the past, and a celebration of the feedback loops of inspiration that moving between musical forms and contexts can catalyse.