BELLA1424V
Release Date: 17th March 2023
"In the case of Racing The Storm, the daydreamer is Iceland’s Emilíana Torrini and her musical acolytes are Belgian duo The Colorist Orchestra. They are teaming together for the second time and seven years since the self-titled The Colorist & Emilíana Torrini album. However the previous effort was – bar two tracks – following the footsteps of The Colorist Orchestra’s procedure of reworking and adding flourishes to pre-existing songs (the successful Torrini hit ‘Jungle Drum‘ for example). Racing The Storm is all new material and therefore displays how excellently well the crystal clear classically-trained vocals of Emilíana Torrini pair with the intricate layers of Aarich Jesper’s striking yet varied drum performances and Kobe Proesman’s compositions that on many occasion feature marimba, flute, pan-pipes and cello, as well as atmospheric noises such as wind – to symbolize the storm in which the group found themselves during the album’s creation. The trio together make the daydreams feel magical and otherworldly, yet can at any moment shift back into reality.
‘Mikos’ takes a true observation from Torrini as inspiration for the daydreaming, in which she saw a schoolgirl display apathy when staring at another girl’s lifeless body in a sea and deciding not to inform the victim’s mother. Torrini imagines the girl’s internal monologue. “Your body’s moving strange, left by the waves to sink. Your milky skin, your blue veins. I never told your mother, I kept my silence.” The music is rather like the musical equivalent of a black comedy; a combination of darker string chords and mysterious creaky noises paired with droplets of piano and quirky swaying acoustic guitar."