Shelf Life by Laura Wolf out June 2nd, 2023 on Whatever’s Clever Records
Photo by Liv Hamilton
Shelf Life by Laura Wolf
Producer, cellist and singer Laura Wolf picks apart genres and stitches them back together again; on a recent feature on NPR Music’s All Songs Considered, Bob Boilen called her a “classical musician in love with sound maniplations”. The result is her signature off-kilter chamber-pop arrangements packed with delicious sound design.
A frequent collaborator in-studio and on stage (credits include Feverkin, Lawrence, Matt Pond PA) Laura’s solo project is a lifelong playground for experimentation and homespun production. Sometimes saturated with cello, often driven by synths and programmed drums, Laura’s pop-collages always embrace glitchy sound design, orchestral fragments and lighter-than-air vocals. Her live performances, a visual as much as an auditory experience, blend analog, digital and whimsical experimentalism.
Shelf Life is the latest snapshot in Laura’s evolution from lifelong classical musician to electronic producer. The album, primarily self-recorded in 2020 her parent’s attic near New Haven and her apartment in Providence, is an intricate patchwork of playful sound design, orchestral fragments, industrial samples and intimate vocals.
In 2019, after being bedridden by an emergency surgery and in the wake of canceling a cross-country tour and move, Laura was forced to reimagine her musical identity as an artist who performs to one that thrives autonomously in the home studio format. For the greater part of the next year, obsessed with climbing a steep music production learning curve, she spent every waking moment in her parent’s attic (turned makeshift recording studio) teaching herself Ableton, recording and electronic production.
This time of rapid creative evolution produced 2 EPs: the first, Artifacts (2021) was the charmingly (but accidentally) glitchy predecessor to the more intentional follow-up, Shelf Life. From its sound palette to its lyrics, Shelf Life is a gradual unspooling of the synergy between original source and manipulated sample, fact and memory, which aptly weaves the fabric of Laura’s musical DNA. Having spent the past year journeying through family folklore and genetic testing, Laura wrote Shelf Life as a way to mourn her maternal grandmother and grapple with genetic disease.
Shelf Life is about life after trauma and what to do with the decay we’re dealt
In the winter of 2021 Laura teamed up with Zubin Hensler (The Westerlies, Half Waif, Fleet Foxes) to mix her arrangements into these EPs that pay homage to their own patchwork process.
Shelf Life is out June 2nd via Whatever's Clever.
Genre: alt-pop, chamber pop
RIYL: Katie Dey, Yaeji, Hyd, Empress Of, Emily Yacina
SINGLES
“Calligraphy and Calculations” out April 4th, 2023
Quirky, beat driven, orchestral bedroom pop. Laura Wolf’s home-cooked manipulations are what make her art-pop arrangements so unique. Fittingly, “Calligraphy and Calculations”, the first single from Wolf’s album Shelf Life, is about a different kind of alchemy. Charmed by the Wikipedia page of supercentenarian Kane Tanaka, the producer first built a synth composite of cello and clarinet samples and then a whole beat-driven world to contemplate the mundane moments that keep our personal Bunsen burners aflame.
RIYL: Yaeji, Katie Dey, Frankie Cosmos
<mood: cross-pollinated>
SINGLE #2: “Paper and Plastic” out April 25, 2023
Playful and ethereal orchestral alt-pop. Intricate, dense, and playfully off-kilter, “Paper and Plastic” is the second single off of cellist, songwriter, and producer Laura Wolf’s forthcoming album Shelf Life. Wolf's breathy vocals weave haunting synth and cello riffs into this oblique chamber-pop exploration of myth and memory.
RIYL: FKA Twigs, The Knife, Empress Of
<mood: ethereal>
SINGLE #3: “Homebody” out May 16, 2023
Playful chamber pop. Idiosyncratic and infectious, “Homebody” is the third single from Laura Wolf’s forthcoming album. Wolf’s home-made arrangements juxtapose sweeping acoustics with industrial samples into a classically infused art-pop collage. Recorded, written, and produced in her parent’s attic while in convalescence, “Homebody” is about being stuck inside while life spins onward.
<mood: oblique>
RIYL: Barrie, Hyd, Emily Yacina
MUSIC VIDEOS
“Paper and Plastic”
video by Dan Criblez for Ambient Pasta Productions
Music by Laura Wolf
“Homebody” by Laura Wolf
Video by Renata Zeiguer
Credits:
written, arranged by Laura Wolf
produced by Laura Wolf and Zubin Hensler
all sounds recorded, programmed and performed by Laura except for:
Laura’s vocals tracks 1 - 5 engineered by Zubin Hensler
Clarinet track 2 performed and recorded by Kristina Teuschler
Piano sample track 3 performed and recorded by Tyler Bussey
~~~
Photo by Liv Hamiltton
“A classical musician also in love with sound manipulations”
- Bob Boilen, NPR Music All Songs Considered
“Singer-songwriter and producer Laura Wolf enshrouds sophisticated chamber music richly textured dream pop. Ornate yet organic.”
— Bandcamp Daily in the New and Notable section, November 2021
“After only a handful of singles, Wolf has become one of the most interesting up-and-coming figures in art pop”
- High Clouds
"Centred around her cello, which drifts, at will, between a soft lilt and piercing strikes, and further imbued with beautifully immersive layering and creaking percussive knocks, ‘Body Part’ ... channels in to something distinctly enchanting in its own right."