Camila Fuchs is Camila de Laborde and Daniel Hermann-Collini whom forged in London’s global melting pot. Originally they hail from Mexico City and Munich respectively.
Heart Pressed Between Stones is Camila Fuchs’ second album after 2016’s Singing From Fixed Rung. In the short time between each they’ve supported they’ve supported / shared a stage with Actress, Aleksi Perala, Laurel Halo, Starcrawler, William Basinski, Braids, Ben Vince, Charles Hayward and played for the second time at Mutek in Mexico live. The DNA of Nordic avant-pop songstresses Guðmundsdóttir and Dreijer Anderson are still traceable but appear this time more as blueprints on which Camila Fuchs map out their identity. The seamless melding of artificial and organic sound sources together with de Laborde’s untreated stripped vocals lends their songs an almost archaic ageless quality where the sonic bedrock affirms the lyrical subject matter. The moment album opener One on One’s chords unfurl it’s apparent you’re in store for a dark ride.
“When we collaborate we don’t work conceptually but rather use events we experience around us to define our creative output” they say of their creative partnership. “Through this process we found a homogeneous relationship between the lyrics and the music, as if they were mirroring each other as a means of creating a direct and strong imprint of a particular moment, experience or happening. Many times, as one can sense on the darker songs, we felt we were battling through in order to make it happen. This wasn’t something necessarily negative as we learned how to take advantage of the difficulties and shift them towards our creative input that resulted in truly unique sonic and visual energies we’d like to think.”
In their second album, Camila Fuchs creates a contrast between a ‘collective reality’ and an ‘ethereal dream world’, using real and artificial sound sources - pulling the listener as it changes in and out of being present in either worlds and provoking an awareness of the music opening up in space; closing, or alternating between both.
“The main influences for this record were the diverse atmospheres and environments it had to go through in order to be created but also the spatiality in music since some of the initial ideas originated at the Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest during an SVS Records residency. Using the 4DSound System pushed us to work in a way which made us completely rethink our approach towards a spatial listening experience. We recorded in different spaces, used different equipment and microphones”
The albums opening line (track entitled ‘One on One’) “I’m sad when I fight the ones to whom I’ve opened my heart” provides perfect counterpoint to the Joy Division Decades reminiscent synthetic dread. It’s a feat effortlessly carried throughout the 6 tracks. ‘My Body’ begins with blast furnace echoes as Camila delivers a harrowing account of night terrors of the worst possible kind, before martial snares that recall Conrad Schnitzler/Mayhem’s Silvester Anfang fire off like M16 rounds. When she sings, “What did that dream try to tell me?” during Direct Truth, it feels as if she is broadcasting from within it.
With only their second release and Camila Fuchs are already showing all signs of becoming a cult outfit.
Heart Pressed Between Stones is released by ATP Recordings on November 9th.