GRACE, RAFFAELLA

Grace & Raffaella is the first collaborative release by ML and Vittoria Totale. Over nine tracks, the album strikes a deceptively minimalist tone, taking in a ton of musical as well as literary references. An elegy on a journey back to the present, with all the hushed intensity of an informed fever dream, Grace & Raffaella has a magic-realist feel. Its vocal parts serve as loopy self-fulfilling prophecies. Cut off from the sun, the gorge grows darker. Using an electroacoustic sense of spacing, as well as abstracted current-day club influences, with scraps of background noise fading in and out, this album's use and treatment of a snippet-like narrative is its core aesthetic. A digital gleam drenches the spoken bits into instances of subtle surrealism. Like a kitchen sink drama stripped of all deadweight. We are on the edge of relinquishing all control here. Rip up your diary and let go of the language of the old ones. Grace & Raffaella is a seductive slice of modern hyper-pop that defines its own intentions over and over again.