Sissi Rada "Pragma" 2016***

This was a present from my friend, Anastasia. She's the only person still giving me CD's without asking me whether I own them first. Everyone else assumes that, if something is up my alley, I probably have it already. Not unreasonably - after all, even I buy me albums I already have, sometimes. Embarassingly, the last weeks I bought about 20 CD's of which it turned out that I already had 4. Anyway, I hadn't even heard of Sissi Rada before. Apparently she's a Greek harpist now living and working in Berlin. Her harp and fairy-like vocals remind me of Joanna Newsom, while the more amospheric pieces have something of This Mortal Coil, a "goth" band I love dearly. According to a press release I found, Sissi calls her music "coquettish-classical-electro-doom pop". It's a charming label, but I've been around too long to be impressed by such genre mixing: Anything "experimental" you think you came up with, pretty soon you'll find that Pink Floyd, Can, Faust or someone else probably already did it in the early 70's. So it's really a question of songcraft and atmospherics. This album has at least one great piece of songwriting "Little White Boat". It could make my Best Of The Year compilation - if I wasn't too deeply absorbed with the past to still make those compilations. It's melodic dream pop of the best order, often reminiscent of Kate Bush, with poignant harp and strings. "Your Laptop" is another strong song, an atmospheric ballad with dreamy vocals and beautiful harp. The lyrics, about us being more intimate with our technological devices than with people, sound sadly too true. "Sunday" is another highlight, mixing Joana Newsom fey-isms and P.J.Harvey rock-isms. "Clouds" also contains some bursts of electric guitar - unwelcome, if you ask me. "Judy Garland" is a rather experimental piece, but the rhythmic elements work quite nicely. "Elevator" also successfully blends the electronic sounds with dreamy female vocals, in a manner reminiscent of Portishead's 3rd album. The Greek language songs "Batman", "Seirinas" are among the more electronic ones and remind me of Greek electronic music pioneer Lena Platonos. Not among my favourites here, and neither is "Macaroni And Tears", or "Sousourada" which sounds like a Bjork song from that musical where she played a blind girl. Generally, though, quite an interesting album which could benefit from a more straight approach: Sissi and her collaborator Max Trieder try too many things out, and not every one is a success. I guess that's how you progress, though: trial and error. I'm looking forward to hearing what they'll do next. 

**** for Little White Boat

*** for Sunday, Elevator, Judy Garland, Your Laptop, Batman, Sousourada

** for Lapislazuli/Macaroni and Tears, Clouds, Seirinas