Marina HerlopAvant-folk enchantment with AstroLab
In the vanguard of experimental music, Barcelona-based artist Marina Herlop is renowned for her ability to blend vocal harmonies with intricate classical piano and avant-garde electronics.
We recently visited her at 229 LAB in Paris to learn more about her journey as an artist, her creative process, and how AstroLab, Arturia’s latest innovation, supports her raw and enchanting live performances.
The making of an artist
Marina Herlop didn't always know she would become a musician, yet her deep, almost instinctual connection to music has shaped her path. She reifies the notion that music is both electrifying and mysterious in nature, and this ineffable quality has always driven her creative process.
Still today, I don't know what music has that can open you totally.
Her musical journey began with classical training, which she revisited in her twenties, aiming to refine her technique. This led to early works inspired by the likes of Chopin and Debussy and Marina’s classical foundation inadvertently seeped into later compositions, with piano phrases situated within and between flourishes of vocal layering and percussion.
The first two albums I made, I composed them with a piano and vocals because it's the only tools that I knew.
New dimensions of sound
Marina released her debut album ‘Nanook’ in 2016 and began experimenting with synths and electronic minimalism in ‘Babasha’. This transition was a significant process and involved coming to terms with the timbral character of synthesized sound and how the harmonic freedom afforded by a piano does not always translate into certain synth presets.
You realize that there are a lot of synths that just don't admit so much harmony. It's too much. It's overwhelming because the timbre itself has some information and the harmony has a lot of information too, so sometimes they collide. So, you need to adapt.
This invited Marina to adapt her approach as she began working more with electronic production, opening up her sonic repertoire and allowing a sound to develop enriched with expressive layers and experimental sound design.
This is particularly evident in her critically acclaimed’ Pripyat album, which draws inspiration from Carnatic music of southern India and embodies all the things that make Marina’s music inimitable - presenting a daring and ambitious musical chimera, dense with twists and turns.
In the time that elapsed between the release of Pripyat and Marina’s latest album ‘Nekkuja’, she underwent a personal revival. Brought on by a sense of uncertainty about her music career, Marina was urged to consolidate her creative energy - resulting in an equally forward-thinking release, infused with new inspiration and uplift.
All your sounds to hand
Marina lauds AstroLab for its simplicity, able to condense complex virtual projects into performance-ready playlists.
It allows for you to reduce something which can feel a bit endless sometimes like the big amount of plugins. It allows you to reduce it to a specific selection and load it. And then you can sort of forget about the screen and forget about the idiosyncrasy of every plugin and have it all stored here.
This aligns with the core vision of AstroLab: a creative ally on stage that invites pure, undistracted musical expression while also able to integrate seamlessly with custom sound design and studio workflows.
Tailored for performance
Marina performs a powerful rendition of ‘La Alhambra’ combining the sounds of AstroLab with vocal harmonies and drum pad percussion; an intimate example of her musicianship and impassioned sonic world.
Not only does AstroLab provide peace of mind on the stage, but it includes advanced sound processing and helpful performance features that truly set it apart.
As a classically trained keyboardist, Marina appreciates the authenticity of AstroLab’s piano presets which are made with physical modeling. This means that the sound is generated inside the keyboard offering a dynamic, fluid response that traditional sampling methods cannot achieve.
Marina also highlights the playlist mode, which allows you to make a different playlist for each song and access them easily during a live performance - requiring only the touch of a button to dive into all your custom sounds and performance settings.
This fidelity and functionality is crucial for artists like Marina, who needs to transition swiftly between traditional instruments and experimental textures during live shows.
Let's say I'm performing in the middle of the song, then I need to quickly change to another preset and then it's very easy because I can do it directly with the button.
A personal connection
The evolution of Marina’s career has been intimately informed by her tools, including the CS80 V, a KeyStep 37 and a trusty KeyLab which she used on her 2021 tour. Adding to this, AstroLab stands out as a true companion for performance artists like Marina who favor simplicity when on stage; offering piano-feel keys, meticulously modeled instruments and the ability to swiftly access custom sound libraries.
Aside from her gear, making music is evidently a deep personal practice for Marina, weaving her passion, haunting lyricism and meticulous composition into unique refractions of sound and voice. The inspiration Marina gets from her creative practice, in her eyes, makes the whole process worth it, which drives her forward.
In the process of making music, you go through this spectrum of emotions. There's a lot of darkness or moments of hesitance or not feeling confident. But there's this amount of time in which you experience euphoria.
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