The new wave of British “jazz” endlessly blurs the boundaries between styles, and from this fusional magma hatch new talents that are perfectly uncategorisable, drawing their references from the history of jazz, as well as pop culture, ethnic music, new music and experimental electro. After Nubya Garcia, and most recently Emma Rawicz, it’s Laura Misch’s turn to make a splash with Sample the Sky. A saxophonist of just 30 years old, her debut album is nonetheless a masterful demonstration of her undeniable freshness and ingenuity. Noticed by London’s small arty world for her first two EPs (Playground in 2017 and Lonely City in 2019), which flirt with ambient and “dreamy electronica”, Laura Misch distinguishes herself from her counterparts by her distanced relationship to her instrument. She integrates its warm, velvety tones to the large palette of her instrumentation like a kind of ersatz of her voice, far from any direct reference to jazz masters.
A singer, as well as a saxophonist, then, not to mention a flautist, a keyboardist and above all, a songwriter, producer and inspired arranger, in Sample the Sky Laura Misch invents a silky, soft and atmospheric music, that is certainly influenced by jazz in some of its compositional processes and in the complexity of its arrangements, but that echoes much more closely the sounds of alternative pop and experimental electronic music.
Conceived in close collaboration with electronic music producer William Arcane, this collection of free-form and flowing songs draws dreamlike, highly sensory landscapes around the Londoner’s angelic yet sensual voice, at times integrating elements of sound captured in nature (e.g. the single Hide and Seek, which uses recordings from sound designer and composer James Bulley’s forest). Mixing synthesizer strings, skilfully deconstructed grooves, ethereal saxophone loops, Maria Osuchowska’s dreamy harp and Tomas Kaspar’s guitar (and her brother Tom’s on one track), Laura Misch develops an immersive sonic realm that is at once funereal, melancholic and insidiously unsettling, while in total osmosis with a subtly activist poetic discourse that invites a form of connection and reconciliation with our environment.
With the ambiguous grace of her voice and the refinement of her melodies, which link the secret structures of the subconscious and the anonymous rhythms of nature, Laura Misch establishes a universe with astonishing power of expression beneath a light and sophisticated surface. The birth certificate of a major player in the new British pop scene!
