Description
LAURA CARBONE
"Live at Rockpalast"
(Atlantic Curve/The Orchard) - Release: December 4th, 2020
A whirlwind year...
2019 started off for Berlin's LAURA CARBONE in January with her first European headline tour. By the time spring closed Laura and her band had followed up by playing New York's New Colossus Festival, then flying the next day to LA to kick off a brief West Coast jaunt before heading down to Austin, Texas for a series of shows at SXSW. Laura then returned to LA to spend the spring writing material for her next record. After a summer break she and the band arrived in Los Angeles again in September to start her 3-week, 6,000 mile coast-to-coast "Empty Sea" tour of the US and Canada, bringing Laura's unique brand of "Noisy Dreamadelica" to fans live in the North American heartland for the first time.
"And this voice, this magnificent voice, that unfolds and ripples like the waves of the ocean, with an invigorating saline quality. It seems to consist of healing minerals that could be smeared on the skin." (Sors-tu.ca)
Back in Berlin and barely over the jetlag, Laura and her boys-in-black were then invited to play a primetime simulcast live concert for Germany's prestigious "Rockpalast" TV series in October - more on that later. Laura then toasted the blur that was 2019 by finishing up in November back home on the mainstage at Berlin's Syn sthesie Festival, the European psyche/noise/shoegaze gathering, sharing the stage with Stereolab, Deerhunter, A Place To Bury Strangers, The Black Lips, Mdou Moctar, and Michael Rother from Neu!. Everyone hugged and went their separate ways for the holidays, ready to start work on Laura's 3rd studio album in January 2020.
Early March and all is going to plan. The new songs are coming together, the studio is booked for May, and Laura and the band are looking forward to returning to the US in the autumn. Then on Friday night, March 13th, Berlin went into lockdown. You know the story, everyone's got their own. Weltschmerz and existential crisis. So what now? Pre-production rehearsals: cancelled. Studio: cancelled. Touring: WTF? Staying alive: ?. How long is this gonna last: ???. After the initial shock, with everyone realizing what they couldn't do now, they began thinking about what they could do.
Wikipedia says, "Rockpalast (Rock Palace) is a German music television show that broadcasts live on German television station Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). Rockpalast started in 1974 and continues to this day. Hundreds of rock, heavy metal and jazz bands have performed on Rockpalast." They're being too humble. Rockpalast has recorded and broadcast legendary, life-changing live shows by Siouxsie & The Banshees, Radiohead, Einst rzende Neubauten, Echo & The Bunnymen, John Cale, Sonic Youth, Talking Heads, Patti Smith, Smashing Pumpkins, QOTSA, Sin ad O'Connor, Van Morrison, David Bowie - it was the kind of show Laura stayed up late for on Saturday nights as a teenager living in small-town southwestern German
