Carla dal Forno – The Garden
Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist Carla dal Forno returns with four burning, intricate new tracks
Carla dal Forno recorded every note on her debut album You Know What it’s Like, and she repeats this personal exercise on a short EP of stylistic kin, The Garden. An Australian multi-instrumentalist living in Berlin, it’s obvious the city’s brand of 20th century futurism and idiomatic artistic aloofness has rubbed off on dal Forno.
Her sound is like a burning, medieval illness. There is a primitive intricacy in her arrangements. Each one has a single foundational element, with other instruments hovering like devils over her shoulder. She draws on prison-cell echo, guitar noise, and foley synthesizer effects of enormous, prehistoric insects and ghosts in an old house, building a crypt-like sound environment.
Opening track We Shouldn’t Have to Wait, is straightforward proto-punk, and the guitar solo on Make-up Talk is only two caustic, dehydrated notes. The centerpiece of the brief EP is its uniquely languid title track – it lurches forward like a B-movie zombie, but dal Forno’s voice is graceful. It’s the most interesting dal Forno gets, balancing esoteric aloofness with a confrontational death glare. Her presence on her own recordings has always been shadowy and stoic, but this time she seems most bellicose and explicit, her voice central to the four ritualistic tracks.
Listen to: The Garden