#76 Feat. Staff Picks in Electronica

Martyyna's debut album Written In The Scars is an ironic play on the cliche that our destiny is written in the stars. More likely, our life's stories are influenced by the scars we carry within us and by our coming to terms with them. Martyyna looks for such confidence on the single This Time, where a reverberating clock chime intertwines with her hazy vocals submerged in sampled water droplets, owl calls, or birdsong. Emerging at times only to repeat a hopeful wish: "This time... don't make me cry." A music video for the track, shot in the Canary Islands' desolate and burned-out land, serves as an inspiration for the album's visual design and the future AV set with Igor Lorok presented at the Lunchmeat Festival in September 2023. The album cover views the body as a similar landscape, recording the imprints and bruises of past happenings and absorbing them into itself. The story of finding the strength to keep going continues on the second single, Distorted, inspired by data loss after Martyyna's first live-set. Past feelings of anger and misery melt into a complex and stuttering production, her deepened vocals intertwine with jittering synth arrangements, slowly rising in pitch and gaining courage. Distant, muffled echoes are trying to break free, regressed traumas are coming to the surface, demanding attention. After a process of healing, overcoming and getting lost in a dream, the voice of Martyyna fuses with that of the Czech producer Oliver Torr on Sunshine Girls and with the musician Portento's on the closing track Invitation. The album ends with light, calming duets - two voices finding harmony at last, extending a euphoric invitation. An invitation to breathe in. To rest. To finally not be scared of one's own self. On Written In The Scars, Martyyna delves deeper into her work with vocals, first introduced on her EP AWAKEN, and perfects her layering of textures, tonal shifts, gradation of rhythms and deconstruction of string instruments. Rather than awaking, however, she's now plunging into more atmospheric dreamscapes. Crafted with both chaos and care, Martyyna's tracks are made of diverse building blocks reflecting her mood shifts and despairs as well as her meticulous craftswomanship gained working as an architect. Only here, forming physical structures in her waking life is interchanged with sonic worldbuilding of her dreams.

Martyyna, Oliver Torr, Portento