Experimental electronic from Aiko Aiko

Vienna-based electronica deep pop duo Aiko Aiko was formed in 2011 by Nada Aiko (vocals, synths, electronics) and Pascal Holper (beats, electronics). After the release of their EP Love Is a Doing Word, their debut album Lab Rats, Escape!, and the remix of Anomie Belle‘s song “The Good Life”, Aiko Aiko have released their new album Radical Nopinion via Whales Records, the French label founded by Julien Marchal (Lissom).

Radical Nopinion is the second album by the Austrian duo Aiko Aiko. A sonic portrait that reflects the zeitgeist and its current developments with songs drenched in melancholia, always permeated by an uplifting, rebellious hopefulness, driving inspiration and desires, pushing and pulling towards an inner and outer utopia.

Along these lines, and without any limitations regarding their compositions, the duo created an album rich in diversity, ranging from epic, dense and beat driven songs to minimal ambient piano and string pieces. All orbiting around a dark electronic core and Nada Aiko’s characteristic and mesmerising voice, which takes on different personas and accumulates into playful choir arrangements.

Aiko Aiko’s eclectic, cinematic and at times classical compositional approach, offbeat the trodden musical paths, draws upon various stylistic sources and features unconventional song structures and time signatures, unexpected dramaturgic turns, seductive melodies and harmonies, various sources of sounds as well as combinations of different genres and styles. In distinct collages of colourful images and scenes, manifold elements are poetically interwoven, contrasting and complementing each other – coalescing in one big
picture of sound and meaning.

Throughout the album, the duo has invited a host of various musicians, who grace Aiko Aiko’s music with their unique style of playing and improvising, such as US musician and activist Anomie Belle (violin), experimental jazz and Klezmer violinist Daniel Weltlinger, film score composer and clarinetist Matija Strniša, and Aaron Thier on additional drums.

In the title and concept of Aiko Aiko’s album, Nopinion stands as the opposite of deadlocked opinions caught in dualities and ideologies, ignorance and fossilised structures, prejudice and dogmatism. It is a radical invitation to be open-hearted, open for new experiences, and at the same time to remain independent – to find one’s own answers, live one’s true self, a subject also touched upon in the album’s first single “Al Lat”.

As the opening track of the album, “Al Lat” perfectly captures their haunting atmospheric sound and acts as the perfect introduction to the LP. The track also features cellist and composer Lukas Lauermann, who also arranged a cello version of the single.

Listen to Al Lat below

More from Music

---

Editor Picks

---