The quintet crafts its own mythology and creates the music of a fictional island for a world-spanning album that invites escape.
Since the collective’s birth in 2013, scavenger-hunt-style explorations have been part of the DNA of the group formed by Tsi Min, Ennio, Julia, Robin and his brother Marvin. With these head-laboratories, sound researchers and renovators of Polynesian oral traditions (within which Tsi Min and Ennio grew up), all sonic explorations find a place, winding and communicating within Mārara, the fictional island that lends its name to 15 15’s debut album.
A miniature continent loaded with vernacular symbols, at once preserved and open to the world, for which this first album would be the perfect soundtrack.
A frontier-pushing universe off the beaten path
Between two interludes that foreground traditional chants (hīmene and ‘ūtē) distilling the island’s mythology, 15 15 returns to its handmade tinkering (in the manner of Hermeto Pascoal during the era of computer-assisted music), its sonic obsessions (the album is mastered by Simon Lancelot, who has worked for Mk.gee and Dijon) and its rhythm signatures renewed and enhanced by electronic music from all horizons.
A world-spanning, winding album as twisted as a season of Lost, one that is walked through, explored, as much as it lends itself to wandering. Yet always off the beaten path.
Mārara (S76 Records/Wagram). Release on March 6.
