Organ Thing of TheDay: “The acclaimed musician and performance artist Lyra Pramuk returns with new single Vega, which marks the inaugural release on her new label pop.soil. An experimental hub for nurturing adventurous fresh musical forms, pop.soil will emphasize connection, community and collective liberation through sound. Ready to put the artist’s needs first, its remit will be broader than a traditional label, encompassing concerts, workshops, mentorship, podcasts and more. Vega is a collaborative release on both 7K! and pop.soil, launching Lyra’s creative partnership with !K7 Music”.
“With its name a play on top soil, the label acts as a metaphorical garden – somewhere for growth, nurture and cultivation, and somewhere for people to come together, exchange ideas, and collectively flourish.
The reference to the earth also points towards a pre-industrial, pre-technological and pre-capitalist folk culture. In the digital age, a record label must re-establish what a diverse, nourishing community can offer an artist, and by reconnecting with music’s ancient, communal roots, they’ll embody the tenets of storytelling, performance, and collective healing.
Vega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, and fifth brightest star in the night sky. It’s also the opening statement of a bold and invigorated new chapter. This dubby psychedelic bloom of harmonious dissonant joy explores hypnotic rhythms, and peak-time trance states of rave, whilst the accompanying video further iterates the newness, with an updated face, and updated mood. Pramuk’s captivating performance is playful and Dadaesque, portraying an artist in reverie, entranced by distant galaxies. The latest instalment in an ongoing collaboration with videographer Joseph Kadow, the video acts as DIY portrait, shot intimately in Lyra’s bedroom.
“Vega was the first star to have itself and its spectrum photographed other than the sun – a long-time companion to human beings for millennia”, says Lyra. “The single explores the intense and devotional connection of human beings to this distant star, an almost erotic desire and impulse to know it, to discover it, to see it and understand it more clearly. It points toward an intergalactic and post-human form of love, extending way beyond the confines of our biosphere.”
The single features Lyra’s most explicit use of the English language yet, its poetic lilt asking, “tell me your name, tell me your story, tell me your colour”, in part romantic ode to the star, and part roll-call for her new community.
With an array of sounds originating from the human voice, on ‘Vega’ Lyra expands her vocal techniques and skill as a producer and performer even further than before, using custom AI models and sequencers to generate vocals and electronic patterns of human voices – further cross-pollinating the aesthetic and expressive power of the organic voice and technology”.
THE ORGAN 