North-Idaho folk artist, Queen Bonobo, has delivered a beautifully hypnotic EP, Sail From This Life, after spending three years in Northern Ireland.
With influences that span multiple continents and traditions, Queen Bonobo has launched a gorgeous new body of work titled Sail From This Life.
From the outset, the multi-genre visionary dives directly into an ocean of raw and earthy instrumental tones, that are delicately set against angelic strings and dreamy vocals.
Queen Bonobo (a.k.a Maya Goldblum) strung together her cathartic tracks one week before returning to North Idaho after three years in Northern Ireland. Her time abroad struck a nerve that exploded within her music, allowing to her orchestrate three fearlessly abstract jazz pieces. Rich with her overseas experiences and after meeting the love of her life (Jack Kelly, producer and double bassist of the EP), Queen Bonobo enchants with her lyricism and her dreamy soundscapes.
Throw Me In delicately drops you into a rabbit hole: “So far across the ocean, and I barely know the way” she says. Drifting through Derry, Northern Ireland, a land replete with the echoes of past revolutions, the vocal fills the listener with hope: “When the air is heavy, I’ll breathe the sea” she sings hauntingly.
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The shadowy heart of the EP, Octopus Lady, is an overwhelming piece, smattered with an array of percussion threads by James Anderson and Andrew McCoubrey. These textured tentacles wrap around you while Queen Bonobo sings, “Octopus lady, you’re not an octopus wrapped up inside your fears, taken over by a sea monster”.
The end of the EP is a sweet kiss into the abyss, Summer Drift. Echoed with a hymn of harmonies with the words “change is coming”, the vocals sail effortlessly, with the cello sinking like an anchor and the harp by Joleen McClaughlin wrapping around it like a vine.
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Listen to Sail From This Life below:
