Green Linnet Records
Ingrid Karklins grew up with the music and dance of Latvia. Her familial influences are the basis for a sound so powerful and invigorating that Ingrid has established a reputation at radio stations across America and in her own prolific Austin, Texas music community. Using an ancient lap harp, violin, and sampler, Ingrid has created a music that, while rooted in tradition, is experimental, daring, and assertive. Latvian melodies and American lullabies combine within textures that are at once both dreamlike and nightmarish, while Ingrid's own diverse voice wafts over African inspired percussion. This is the music of the new world and the new Europe, played with an immigrant's romantic heart and a native's innovative hand.
Option--nov/dec 1992
INGRID KARKLINS: A Darker Passion. A breathtaking marriage of Latvian folk songs and artsy pop, this disc has many layers and a calm personality. It's a folk album with rock rhythms that shake up the traditional melodies and rethink them in the terms that samplers and synthesizers have created. Karklins may not have sounded like this had Laurie Anderson or Kate Bush not first paved the way (two songs here could be mistaken for Anderson's, in fact). But the musical experiments here go beyond unexpected wordplay and artful puckishness. One tune has only two fretless basses and kokle, a traditional lap harp; another simply uses conga and a wide variety of keyboard sounds to conjure up a vivid, percussive poem. Elsewhere there are combinations of violin, cello, bass, percussion, guitar, and keyboards interweaving with Karklins's lithe vocals. The translated lyrics are oddly dark and earthy, and Karklins's own songs are dreamy, which makes the music's strength and foreboding all the more intriguing. Even the lively dance tunes have, to borrow from the title, a dark sort of passion that animates the music.
-- Dan Maryon
Mirabella
Latvian-American singer Ingrid Karklins also manages to sound not quite like anything you've ever heard. Her album A Darker Passion (Green Linnet) treads a fine line between the earthly and the metaphysical, blending Latvian folk songs and traditional instrumentation with vibrant modern rhythms arranged with electric cello, keyboards and violin.
 |
CD (ikcd-102) $14.99 Cassette (ikcd-102) $9.99 To Place an order, note Title and cat. # select ORDER FORM: Or Call Toll Free: (800) 611-4698 |
 |
Harmony Ridge Music P.O. Box 995 El Granada, California 94018 e-mail: hrmusic@rahul.net |
Return To Artist Page
copyright (C) 1995 Harmony Ridge Music, El Granada, CA, USA