The music made by Liz plays like a surreal movie where jazz divas meet the sound of rain and samples of movie lines meet broken beats and subtle noise. It's a perfect expression of her love for art, her desires and dreams. When I first heard the music on Liz Christine's MySpace, I didn't quite know what to make of it. Maybe as all music that is worth your time, it also takes some time to get into it and this music is probably best appreciated through your headphones on a rainy and lazy weekend, far from everyday routine. A music made of dreams, wich are also the matter of her work.
"The dreams I use to make my music, the one's I dream when I'm asleep or even awake, they all relate to my past and present life...they mix together my long-time obsessions with present experiences, and maybe everybody is like that" she tells me through an e-mail interview."I write about a few of them in my blog and one of them inspired the title track of my new album...actually all the songs on this album are about a dream with a voice, much more about the dream itself than the original voice that inspired this dream. All my dreams are about love, sex and relationships."
'Lao no Hospício', the new album she is refering to, has just been released by Menthe de Chat, a brazilian label dedicated to electronic and experimental music." My first two records came out through Fronha Records, a kkfs remix album and Caterina Flavor. Everything else was released through Menthe de Chat". When Fernando created the label, he invited Liz to release the already finished Lizbox on his new enterprise. You can download the complete albums, with artwork through the labels website.
"One of my songs was also included in a collection of Japan's label Flau and they also invited me to release a vinil record there."
The use of sound samples from old jazz recordings is mixed on Lao no Hospício with beats provided by kkfs. Sounds nothing like nu-soul or hip-hop, in case you're wondering. Her music sounds very organic despite all the electronic elements and filtered beats. Liz turns her passions and obsessions into her own dreamy soundtrack. "If I could turn books into music, I'd do it. I love words, I love to read and write and I love screenplays. The sentences I take from movies have a lot of personal meaning to me, they are all related to the story that grows into the idea for each record. They are all a result of my experiences and fantasies or a mixture of these. I love cinema and I love literature, screenplays, theater, dreams and words...and music, of course".She has once been a Tricky and Portishead admirer but what really got her was Billie Holiday, one of her eternal obsessions and wich led her to explore other jazz singers like Nina Simone. " I started to make mixtapes for myself and used records by Monika Enterprise, Isan, Dntel, Figurine and Styrofoam, stuff like that. I would insert vocal samples and sound recordings of rain and those were my first experiments with music software." And those mixtapes eventually led Fernando to invite Liz to contribute on an album, a collection of remixes of his own first record. "I made so many remixes he ended up turning my work into a record by itself and that was my first proper album."
Liz is not very optimistic on the perspective of modern day divas, like the one's from the past that seem to be her partners on her records and dreams. "Talent is not aprecciated as much these days and if divas exist today, they're certainly not in the media. I don't think there's a voice this days that could be compared to Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Etta James, Dinah Washington, Ella Fitzgerald, Edith Piaf...at least not that I know about. You don't see anyone like Greta Garbo (pictured here) or Marlene Dietrich or Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn. The thing is...I love jazz...contemporary music, with the exception of electronic music, doesn't really interest me" she explains. The first half of the 20th century seems to be what best identifies with Liz's desires as an artists."What fascinates me about music and films of the period is that women would live to love, they were dedicated to it, to a great love and I would really like to meet someone like that. My fondness for electronic music is really a personal matter, I can't imagine doing something else, I never really liked rock and other stuff. I'm also driven by the possibility to have my own take on all the vintage things that I love and bring them to present time."Listen:
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