Maria Chiara Argirò releases new album CLOSER, unveils video for TIME
Recent Praise for Maria Chiara Argirò
“[With her] other-worldly songwriting techniques Maria seems to shift beyond the corporeal” Clash
“wraps existential concerns of inner peace and connecting with one's surroundings inside of a tense, gentle ascendent ballad.” The Fader
“I absolutely love this new track which opens up and really starts to kinda glimmer and glow as it progresses” Lauren Laverne (BBC 6 Music)
“wonderful new music a fascinating artist” Mary Anne Hobbs (BBC 6 Music)
Rising electronic luminary Maria Chiara Argirò’s new album CLOSER is out now via US label Innovative Leisure (Bambii, JIMMY EDGAR, BADBADNOTGOOD). Alongside the new album, Maria Chiara Argirò is also sharing the Raoul Paulet directed video for album track ‘Time’. Filmed at The Cross in London, the video features Maria Chiara Argirò and her live band performing the track with visual manipulations creating an otherworldly experience.
Watch The Video For ‘Time’ Here
CLOSER opens with ‘Light’ – a song about “establishing a lighter and balanced relationship with your inner self and consequently with others” – is a beautiful piece of immersive yet infectious synth-pop which Clash described as having a “hazy beauty”. Lead single ‘Closer’ follows, merging sparse drums with deft melodies, glimmering production and a vocal performance that feels both tender yet quietly rousing. Elsewhere on the record, ‘Floating’ is a song Argirò intended to be listened with your eyes closed, whilst album standout ‘Time’ is a stirring track that gradually builds from a soft, soul-jazz inflected piece before it rockets into techno thumper territory – yet all the while retaining that light, dreamy, immersive quality that Argirò is so skilled at.
CLOSER is an album rooted deep in a feeling that overcame Argirò. “I was really locked in with this feeling and I was like: I need to make this record now,” she says. It’s not an obvious or easily describable feeling that was bubbling away inside Argirò though. “A dreamlike feeling in motion,” she explains. “A feeling that we cannot describe, a dream I’m sort of walking through.”
However, despite being rooted in something indescribable or definable, Argirò set about making this record with a laser focus on what she wanted to do. “I had a clarity for this record that I didn't have for others,” she says. “I just knew what I wanted – from the production to where I wanted a trumpet solo. We didn’t experiment a lot with this record because I just knew what to do. This might be a once in a lifetime thing to happen.”
Argirò has been a central figure in the UK jazz, classical and electronic worlds since she moved to London from Rome over a decade ago. A skilled pianist since childhood, she’s collaborated with everyone from These New Puritans to Jono McCleery to Jamie Leeming alongside output with Moonfish. Her previous solo album, the stunning electronic jazz-fusion record Forest City, received widespread critical acclaim and was covered by the likes of The Guardian, Pitchfork, Vogue, and Rolling Stone. Her music has featured in the Netflix series, Elite, and she can count the likes of Four Tet and Gilles Peterson as fans, with the latter describing her music as “absolutely crazy good”.
Finding clarity and sharpened definition in between blurred lines and dreamlike worlds, is the core duality and dichotomy that underpins CLOSER. Not only is this reflected in the philosophy that drove Argirò’s creative approach but it results in a genre-fluid record that gracefully blends engulfing atmospheres, glistening synths and pummelling beats; creating a space where melody and deconstructed rhythms harmoniously coexist.
Much like that feeling that overcame and gripped Argirò, forcing her to make the most direct and clear work of her life, the end result may not be easy to pigeonhole into genre but it is loaded with personality.
