Marina Herlop is a classically trained vocalist and pianist from Barcelona. On her latest album Pripyat, she leaves the signposted road and gets deliberately lost in a magical forest of cut-and-paste piano melodies and bird calls. Like an heir to Meredith Monk, she lets her voice slip between guises: humming, whispering, singing… 

She has also experimented with composition techniques from South Indian Carnatic music; one of which is konnakol, where chanted syllables are transformed into percussion. What at first listen might sound like lyrics in a cryptic language turn out to be vocal sounds beyond translation;  no stories, just sound allowed to be sound. 

Marina Herlop was interviewed by Markus Görsch.