Serafina Steer

'Peach Heart' / 'Mano e Mano'

Serafina steer-Peach heart-Very very limited 7 inch only release on the static caravan label from weird folk artist serafina steer with her particular brand of harp led sounds, this is one of those strangely beautiful sounds that come along every now and then, instant comparisons could be made to joanna newsom or bat for lashes but steers voice is not quite so strange as newsoms, the use of electronic effects to multilayer the vocals gives the track a feel of something lauri anderson would come up with if she were a member of pentangle or fairport convention, a really lovely intimate piece of strange folk music, features mano e mano on the flip side, we only have a few of these in stock so first come first served and only one
copy per customer please, february 2007-7"-Static caravan-€5.50

Comparisons to Joanna Newsome? No way...doesn't every indie rocker have a harp? Are they kidding? Anyone would have balls to release something with only a harp accompaniment at this point. I think Ms. Newsome has this category all but sewn up, anyone even attempting anything vaguely similar is going to be held up to this standard. Which begs the question, will there be an immediate backlash against this as jumping on the harp bandwagon? Who knew this would be a bandwagon. This isn't the type of music that's easily formulaic. That being said, from her myspace there is more going on here than just some harp stylings and a pretty voice, there are layers of other electronic things going on here and vocal experiments with vocorders and large tiled bathrooms, of course it's haunting.
It will be hard to overcome a kind of joni mitchell feel to the direction this is taking, but I guess that isn't all bad.
Apparently the guy from tunng is involved so this could add an entirely perfect direction for this harpy folk sound.
I'm not saying I hate it.

It's at boomkat also, but definitely an import.