35. Briana Marela

Artwork for season four by Taylor W. Rushing of Not Bad Illustration.

Singer, composer and multimedia artist Briana Marela’s transcendent music emphasizes love, thick and swirling, like frozen yogurt you can listen to. Briana grew up in Seattle and found herself immersed in its vibrant independent music community when she was still in high school. We spoke about how she came to record her first album with a cast of established music royalty (including friend of the show Karl Blau), toeing the line between pop and experimental music, her affinity for Mister Rogers, keeping her family’s heritage alive, her feelings about the 4th Amendment and working with Radiolab, recording with Sigur Ros producer Alex Somers in Iceland, creating sonic conceptual art, and her recent move to Brooklyn.

This episode was recorded and produced by Markly Morrison, and then edited by Miles Rozatti.

Recommendations:

Find all of Briana Marela’s albums on Briana’s bandcamp site.

Watch the music video below for “Dani” that was mentioned in the interview:

Below is her MFA thesis performance we were talking about. In her own words, “A collection of 3 pieces sharing common ground on their minimal gestural qualities, use of the voice, and melody in relation to performing live electronic music. They were all created using Max 8 and machine learning with Wekinator.” In my words, some very advanced sonic art.