#adele h

[brusiocostante]

"Non potendo avere il sorriso dell'amore mi accontento della sua smorfia..."

Adele H.

[under-the-screen]

Flaw

[“The story of Adele H.”, F. Truffaut, 1975]

[sorens2015]

ISA

[mabellonghetti]

Isabelle Adjani photographed by Jacques Henri Lartigue during the shooting of the film "L'Histoire d'Adèle H," 1975.

[miracleofdragon]

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Adele H

Adele H is a singer/songwriter from Bergamo-Milan in Italy, who records on her own using loops and voices and stratifications of sounds to build spare but textured compositions. She is married, for what it’s worth, to long-time Dusted favorite Buck Curran, but her work is distinct and idiosyncratic and altogether its own thing. Of her album, Impermanence, Jennifer Kelly wrote, “[Her voice] floats and loops and flutters, letting wordless ‘ooh-ooh-oohs’ vault across the scale and blowing workmanlike words like glass into fantastic shapes.”

Major Women that inspired me in last few years and some that have always inspired me

Rosa Balistrieri — “Mi votu e mi rivotu”

The power of a voice in a misogynist world

Bjork — “ancestress”

The intimacy of a daughter and her dying mother

Daniela Pes — “A Te Sola”

A new discover from Italy, the tradition melts with synths

Clarissa Connelly — “Holler”

Unexpected melodies that makes me wanna compose more

Nina Simone — “Summertime”

One of the biggest inspirations of my life

Weyes Blood — “Andromeda”

An ancient voice in a contemporary world

Antonia Pozzi — Seven Poems

The twilight poems of a woman struggling in the horrific Italian 1930s

Vandana Shiva — Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology

This book offers a change in perspective

Hanna Arendt - Eichmann In Jerusalem

Arendt’s book opened the heart while opening the brain

Juliette de Baïracli Levy and Adaya

Juliette of the Herbs Documentary, Juliette de Baïracli Levy

The #herbs #Juliette de Bairacli Levy mentions are Rosemary and Southernwood (the same as Wormwood Cola). She also mentions Geranium, Nastur

A legend of herbs and life that lives on in the voice of her granddaughter, my musician friend Adaya

[dustedmagazine]

Adele H — Impermanence (Obsolete)

Impermanence by Adele H

Adele H’s 2018 debut, Civilization, was largely a capella, the Italian singer’s voice looped and massed and harmonized into swelling crescendos, with only a little percussion for company. This time around, she adds some shadowy, minor key piano to her arsenal. The piano adds rhythm and solidity to songs, but it is still the voice that takes precedence. It floats and loops and flutters, letting wordless “ooh-ooh-oohs” vault across the scale and blowing workmanlike words like glass into fantastic shapes.

The title track, for instance, begins in a regular, well-mannered series of piano arpeggios—if you grew up in the 1970s, you might get a whiff of Chicago’s “Color My World.” But it’s the singing that catches you up as it bends and pulls and stretches at the melody in slithery flourishes. Adele H has a way of softening, almost swallowing the consonants so that it’s hard to hear the words, but that just makes it easier to focus on the sonic pleasure of her blues-inflected delivery. By the cut’s end, the piano fades away, and the artist layers crystalline counterpoints on top of each other, the word “impermanence” interleaved in luminous harmonies.

“Lucia” is quicker, more animated, almost jazzy in the way that Adele riffs on words, stringing them out in quick bursts of bursts of dazzling melody then cutting back to a spare chant. One piano note repeated holds down the rhythm, but the singing unfurls in free, organic profusion.

The album includes alternate takes of five of its cuts, though the differences are very subtle. The second version of “Bubble of Gold” seems a bit more emphatic and full of drama than the first, but “April”’s stormy bursts of piano and skittering vocals seem much the same in both takes.  

These works are moody and introspective. You feel almost as if you’re eavesdropping on some private reverie. Adele H muses on the personal—family, children, female empowerment—and explores the shape and possibility within each melodic phrase. She might be thinking it through as the tape rolls. The music comes out fresh and unstudied and lovely.

Jennifer Kelly

[pazzoincasamatta]

Adele H. - Una storia d'amore (1975) di François Truffaut

Isabelle Adjani e François Truffaut