ELIZABETE BALČUS
Elizabete Balčus is a Latvian musician and performance artist who creates neo-psychedelic dream
pop from surprising, collaged, genre juxtapositions that is simultaneously melodic and experimental. She works with a strong visual aesthetic that draws upon modern surrealism, contemporary fashion and geometric imagery.
Elizabete graduated from Latvian Academy of Music with an emphasis in flute performance. Anything is permitted in her musical cosmos: looping flute and voice, clicking electro pop beats and playing vegetables as a synthesizer as well, leaving the listener in a blissed out trance like state, somewhere between the waking and sleeping. Live performance engage the audience with a psychedelic and theatrical situation that is as befuddling as it is mesmerizing.
In September 2022 she released a new album album Hotel Universe on the Canadian label Mothland.
“Her stage performances are as surrealist as her albums – she’s often draped in avant-garde fashion, with a looper that allows her to sing, play flute, and use synths hooked up to fruits and vegetables. …You’ll hear free jazz improvisation and classical flourishes from the flute, but Balčus’ vocals that roam in the synthwork is more reminiscent of the avant-garde. Those sounds are flutes which Balčus has layered and filtered to the point of abstraction, creating an impressive symphony from humble beginnings.” The Quietus on the new album.
Links
Music https://elizabetebalcus.bandcamp.com
Videos https://www.youtube.com/user/elizabetebalcus
link on press-pack, riders
From the shores of the Baltic Sea comes Elizabete Balčus, author, composer, and performer of protean songs. In Rome, Ms. Balčus studied operatic singing at an illustrious conservatory called Santa Cecilia, which once had a certain Ennio Morricone as a student. In Riga, Latvia, she studied pop and jazz at the Jāzeps Vītols School of Music. In 2011, she released Wooden Horses, an EP with a rather folk leaning. Then in 2016 Elizabete Balčus released Conarium, a lush collection with twelve original songs and a cover by CocoRosie. And here, six years later, is Hotel Universe, an album of ten disturbingly beautiful pieces. Is this auditory experience comparable to listening to a Loreena McKennitt album on LSD? Would the Celtic melodies of the Ontarian bard be adorned with the unheard percussions, the various synthetic laces, the concupiscent sax, and the Dionysian flutes of Elizabete Balčus? Still, we are dealing here with a creator that the abundant arrangements do not repel. Through songs with names that are both evocative and zany, similar to the names of works by Pedro Almodóvar or Margaret Atwood (“Until You’re Flesh Free,” “Narcissism Purgatory,” “The Skin I Live in,” “Ouroboros,” “Get Naked,” “Venus Flytrap” or, my favorite, “Asparagus or Brussels Sprouts?”), Miss Balčus makes us hear all kinds of things. She goes foraging here at Björk, there at Laurie Anderson, without ever lingering. The musicophiles who are fond of taxonomy might get a headache here, as the pieces touch various sub-genres without ever settling down: synth-pop, folktronica, chamber folk, chamber pop, electroacoustic, baroque folk, electronica, art-pop, ambient-pop, and tutti quanti. Elizabete Balčus is an elusive creator, and that is to her artistic credit.
PanM360 on new album Hotel Universe
“The vibe is so transcendent in places you feel you are in motion listening to it, transported in a stupor through some faerie glade and awake before you have time to register what has happened.”
The Quietus
“Blissed out electronics with heavenly melodies”Clash Magazine
“She frequently employs her voice as another instrument with its whoops, shrieks and groans giving the impression of a ghostly opera singer, while at other times creating an eerie choir by multi tracking her vocals.”Sounds Magazine
“There’s a lot of clever pedal trickery here as she loops her trusted flute against a wall of synthesizers and the veg plot. It’s like crazy guitar shredding but on a wind instrument and it’s genuinely hypnotizing.”
The 405
“A performance closer to performance art rather than conventional music. I was fascinated to see what was coming next. Definitely a “marmite” act (i.e. you’ll either love it or hate it), but either way she is not likely to care too much.”Art in Brighton
“While the likes of Bjork, Efterklang and Braids are audible influences, Balčus is creating her own path in music that feels unique and has the potential to see her become a major international star.”Gigwise
“Art-piece mesmerising to watch and to hear.”Bloop Magazine
“Cocteau Twins meets Bjork. Great arrangement and gorgeous vocals” Veglinggo
“Balčus sowing together total opposites, putting herself in untenable positions — free jazz jams and stringent rhythmic policies — in the name of a very particular kind of pop music. It’s a fantastic, weird record, possibly unlike anything you’ve heard. A triumph of fanfare and fury with a patchwork discipline” Norman Records
Selected live: Pop-Kultur Berlin (2021) DE, The Great Escape (2017 and 2019) Brighton, UK / FOCUS Wales (2019) Wrexham, UK / LOFTAS (2019) Vilnius, LT / LUCfest (2018 and 2019) Tainan, TW / Eurosonic Noorderslag (2018) Groningen, NL / Westway LAB (2018) Guimaraes, PT / Tallinn Music Week (2018) Tallinn, EST / Scenica Festival (2018) Vittoria, IT / Reeperbahn Festival (2017) Hamburg, GER / What’s Next in Music? (2017) Vilnius, LT