Image: Tobias Zielony
Maya Shenfeld has shared the new single “Silver” from her debut album In Free Fall, out Jan. 28th. The Jerusalem-born and Berlin-based artist originally composed “Silver” originally for harpsichord, but processed and morphed the piece into an electronic elegy which marks a moment of respite and reflection between the album’s darker moments. The piece crescendos around a crystalline drone, adding layers of swirling string-like atmosphere that suggest untethered melodies suspended in air which reach an overwhelmingly sublime zenith.
The physical nature of sound is central to Shenfeld’s work. She elaborates: “I’ve always been taken by the way music can seemingly stretch, bend, and even break time, its ability to touch something in you, emotionally, and the fact that it’s a resolutely physical experience.” In Free Fall’s use of space and dynamics captures the distinctly three-dimensional nature of Shenfeld’s live performances and sonic installations. The album is a decisive statement from a crucial new voice in contemporary music, challenging traditional structures and narratives. Named after an essay by Hito Steyerl of the same name, Steyerl’s description of “free fall” equally speaks to the wonderful sensation and innovation of Shenfeld’s music: “The horizon quivers in a maze of collapsing lines and you may lose any sense of above and below, of before and after, of yourself and your boundaries… with the loss of horizon also comes the departure of a stable paradigm of orientation, which has situated concepts of subject and object, of time and space, throughout modernity. In falling, the lines of the horizon shatter, twirl around, and superimpose.”
Following the release of In Free Fall, Maya Shenfeld will be performing alongside labelmate Colleen at King’s Place in London on March 19th.
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