Liana Flores – Flower of the soul (2024) [Official Digital Download 24bit/96kHz]

Liana Flores – Flower of the soul (2024)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 38:41 minutes | 720 MB | Genre: Bossa Nova, Latin Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © liana flores

Liana Flores is a London-based English-Brazilian singer-songwriter influenced by Bossa Nova, ’60s British folk, and the Romantic poets, calling to mind artists from Nick Drake and Astrud Gilberto to contemporaries like Laufey and Faye Webster. With her music, Liana aims to open a window to the sublime in the everyday, simplicity, emotional candor, and the rhythms of the seasons – inviting each listener into what she describes as a ‘fantastical realm’. Liana appears now with her debut album ‘Flower of the soul’, an 11-track collection of vignettes that illustrate co-existent playfulness and sincerity, the suggestion of ephemerality; the consonance of soul, and soil, too. Throughout the album, love wanders from the romantic to the ecospiritual on tracks like ‘Nightvisions’, to the Bossa-inspired ‘I wish for the rain’ and saudade ‘Now and then’, before finding a moment of clarity with ‘Butterflies (feat. Tim Bernardes)’.

Liana Flores almost had a very different life. In the Sliding Doors version, there is a parallel universe in which she is working in a lab—having completed her zoology degree at Scotland’s St. Andrews University—and maybe playing music on weekends if she has time. Instead, it’s the music that has become the focus for the South Norfolk, England, native, after her song “Rises the Moon” has racked up more than 129 million related posts on TikTok. Flores, to the credit of those millions of fans, is no pop tart. Her mood-ring music pulls inspiration from classic jazz, retro Brazilian music and 60-year-old British folk songs. The title of her debut album is lifted from an old Kate Bush lyric (“You crush the lily in my soul”), and there are traces, too, of Bush’s otherworldly vibe in the music—particularly on songs like “Crystalline,” with its windchime-like effect. “Hello again” mixes the influences of ’60s Brazilian pop and Bacharach, weaving in dreamy flute from David Ralicke and Flores’ own low-key guitar strumming. “Orange-coloured day” evokes Ren Faire folk, with Gabe Noel’s glycerine bass and Dory Bavarsky’s loungey nightclub piano building a foundation over which Flores’ free-floating “da da da” vocalizations summon the sunniness of the title. “Nightvisions” charms with spritely canyon folk vibes, but has its roots in a different realm: Flores has said it is loosely inspired by the Twilight books and movies as an expression of the transformation of love. “Halfway heart” dips into playful and agile samba, while “I wish for the rain” could be an old jazz standard. It’s remarkable that a song as spare as “Now and then” actually has so much going on: lovely, tender guitar contrasted next to Jaques Morelenbaum’s (Caetano Veloso, Ryuichi Sakamato) sharper cello and Flores’ featherweight vocals. Producer and mixer Noah Georgeson has also worked with Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart, but here brings a touch more sophistication than quirk. And “Butterflies” pairs Flores with São Paulo musician Tim Bernardes, a founding member of the tropicalia-indie group O Terno, for a cheerfully lighthearted duet that draws on Brazil’s great pop heritage. – Shelly Ridenour

Tracklist:
1-01. Liana Flores – Hello again (04:13)
1-02. Liana Flores – Orange-coloured day (02:48)
1-03. Liana Flores – Nightvisions (03:56)
1-04. Liana Flores – Crystalline (04:39)
1-05. Liana Flores – Now and then (04:56)
1-06. Liana Flores – Halfway heart (03:45)
1-07. Liana Flores – “When the sun…” (00:18)
1-08. Liana Flores – I wish for the rain (02:31)
1-09. Liana Flores – Cuckoo (03:05)
1-10. Liana Flores – Butterflies (05:22)
1-11. Liana Flores – Slowly (03:03)

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