Olicía - Out of the Blue
Olicía is the band of the two singers and multi-instrumentalists Fama M’Boup and Anna-Lucia Rupp. Driven by female voices, they share lead vocals and other musical elements, layering, beatboxing, harmonizing, and creating sounds that occur in part in the present and in part in the future. The instrumentation ranges from synths and looped vocal snippets to guitar and clarinet. Genre boundaries have always been fluid for Olicía – fragile folk moments, pulsating pop, avant-garde soul, spoken word, jazz... The music of Olicía seems softly futuristic due to their unique method of creation through two synchronized loop stations. The constraints (and lengths) of loop-based music seem practically nullified by the two, crafting direct songs with efficiency and elegance that stand alone without backing tracks, leaving room for improvisation and chance.
In 2021, Olicía released their debut album Liquid Lines - a double album that juxtaposed each song it contained in two very different versions. Since then, they have released solo albums (in June) and band projects (NOUK, cocotá) on their own label o-cetera. They were part of the live lineup for Sophie Hunger, have released music with Dota Kehr and Kat Frankie, and contributed a song to the soundtrack of Robert Gwisdek's (Käptn Peng) directorial debut, but above all, the two have worked for more than two years on the songs and works that are now collected in Out of the Blue. While Liquid Lines explored the boundaries of individual songs, Out of the Blue is now an attempt to view their art form completely anew, connecting their own music through dialogue and exchange with other art forms.
For each song on this album, there exists a work of art with the same title, which acts as a counterpoint and was created through a close exchange process. An outcome of ongoing pings and pongs until both sides felt they had reached a result. Out of the Blue is therefore not what is often called an “album that flows seamlessly.” It is rather the opposite. Each song opens its own world while simultaneously gazing into the parallel universe of another artist or creator from fields such as film, design, painting, literature, and crafts. Each pair of works has its own space on the website of the band's own label o-cetera.com.
If one were to highlight a central song, it would be the anthemic ‘Finally’ – a collaboration with the author Sudabeh Mohafez, who is admired by both musicians. ‘Finally’ is an invocation of female self-empowerment and resistance, but also a self-portrait within a long cultural tradition of women, viewing both facets of an ‘out of the blue’: the unexpected and unanticipated, but also the emergence from despair and oppression toward autonomy and a powerful exhale. The accompanying prose text forms the basis of the song lyrics and is also part of the album artwork, and can be read as a manifesto of this truly unique album.
Olicía creates a very special atmosphere at their concerts, and we are very excited that they will be returning to Hamburg on March 20th to the beautiful Nachtasyl.
Admission: 20:00
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
