Piana - Raula (2021)

I'm not gonna lie, Naoko Sasaki a.k.a. Piana's albums were very important to me when I was younger, and her Ephemeral basically made me fall into dream pop while Muse is one of the best albums I know in general. She was silent for 7 years but now the Japanese artist is back with a long and beautifully airy album Raula.

Very fittingly, the album's title basically means humming in Icelandic, the language and culture that seems to have some influence over the artist's last work. The album "moves through a quiet space, then to a prologue, brimming with hope, which opens up a fantasy adventure story feel" which is helped by the fact that Piana's humming-like airy vocals are in fact singing lyrics written in imaginary language that makes it possible for the listeners to "imagine an abstract, beautiful fantasy world, no matter what country they are from". Sounds like something very well-known and also very Icelandic.

The music around the vocals is extremely airy as well with the omnipresent neoclassical elements (most importantly violins by Atowa Yuri) and beautiful piano keys by Hiromi Kurosaki all over the place. But at the same time, it's not as innocent as I remember it to be, with quite invasive sounds of drums (as in Filica) and the general massively monumental vibes that came from the fascination for medieval and spiritual music. Most of the album though consists of short piano-based beautiful ballads. Also, North totally sounds like a Christmas carol, even feels weird to listen to it now.

Raula costs 10 USD.

Check: Rafe

Country: Japan

Genre: neoclassical dream pop

Label: guns N' girls

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