Nerissa Campbell’s fourth studio album, 'After The Magic' (Crooked Mouth Music) is a moody dreamscape reminiscent of a literary Roman à clef. It features Balinese gamelan, a jazz trio, pensive solo piano pieces, and fleeting guitars woven together with Campbell’s melancholy vocals.
The mix of musical genres explore Nerissa's sense cultural belonging and displacement, and create a unique and surprising album. Not easily classified as Jazz, Singer-songwriter, or traditional Balinese Gamelan, and yet subtly all of these things, Campbell's songs use Balinese gamelan gong cycles and modes, lyrical stories, improvisation and jazz harmonies, and non-vocal compositions that combined create a sense of space and breath. Cycling and repeating, ebbing and flowing, the songs of 'After The Magic' inform and are informed by each other. ...
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Nerissa Campbell’s fourth studio album, 'After The Magic' (Crooked Mouth Music) is a moody dreamscape reminiscent of a literary Roman à clef. It features Balinese gamelan, a jazz trio, pensive solo piano pieces, and fleeting guitars woven together with Campbell’s melancholy vocals.
The mix of musical genres explore Nerissa's sense cultural belonging and displacement, and create a unique and surprising album. Not easily classified as Jazz, Singer-songwriter, or traditional Balinese Gamelan, and yet subtly all of these things, Campbell's songs use Balinese gamelan gong cycles and modes, lyrical stories, improvisation and jazz harmonies, and non-vocal compositions that combined create a sense of space and breath. Cycling and repeating, ebbing and flowing, the songs of 'After The Magic' inform and are informed by each other.
Nerissa Campbell
Nerissa Campbell is a singer, songwriter, & multi-instrumentalist. She grew up in towns along the coast of Western Australia and on the island of Bali. Her family settled in the capital city of Perth, Australia where she attended the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), earning a degree in Music: Jazz composition & performance. Currently based in Brooklyn, New York, she has released four albums under her own label, Crooked Mouth Music: Paint Me Orange (2003), Musings of a Telescopic Tree (2009), Blue Shadows (2012), and After The Magic (2016). She has also appeared on several albums by post-metal band A Storm of Light, and is a performing member of New York's Balinese gamelan, Dharma Swara. She has performed regularly at NY institutions Rockwood Music Hall and The 55 Bar, where you can catch her solo and core band shows.
“[Nerissa] is in that Billie Holiday mold. Her voice is mysterious, elegant, and moody.” - The Daily Iowan
“Melancholic, Cat Power Sun-like lyrics, a Billie Holiday-esque timbre and a touch of Norah Jones in her swooping croon, tumultuous emotions characterize Nerissa Campbell’s [music]” -xpress magazine
Gamelan Dharma Swara
Dedicated to the traditions of Balinese performing arts and committed to exploring new music, New York City’s Gamelan Dharma Swara is carving out a compelling niche. Founded in 2000, Dharma Swara is one of the leading Balinese gamelan and dance groups in the United States and has performed at renowned NYC music venues including Le Poisson Rouge, Symphony Space, Joe's Pub, Roulette , and BAM, as well as cultural institutions such as MoMA The Museum of Modern Art and Asia Society. The group toured Bali in 2010 with an invitation to perform in the Bali Arts Festival’s popular Battle of the Bands, and most recently, a stunning performance at Basilica SoundScape in Hudson, New York, was described by The New Yorker as feeling “straight-up religious” and provoked “perhaps the weekend’s most rapturous response (including a fair amount of crying.)”
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