MARINA LAZZARA: Wind On The Firecracker Of The Building Next Door, the songs

Marina Lazzara

Wind On The Firecracker Of The Building Next Door, the songs

© 2004 Marina Lazzara and Pax Recordings (646289026524)

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The songs on Wind... attempt to re-envision the symbolic plasticity of the pop-folk ballad and to dig into the spontaneous expression of song as nature. Noise folk... where the "experimental" meets the "song".

notes

The songs on Wind... attempt to re-envision the symbolic plasticity of the pop-folk ballad and to dig into the spontaneous expression of song as nature. Noise folk... where the "experimental" meets the "song". Individually, they are exercises in the reestablishing of personal ideals about love, ancestry and politics. These songs are emotions. These songs are my blues.

Wind On The Firecracker Of The Building Next Door is Marina's first solo collection of songs. Soon to be published is its companion book of poems that shares the same name. Wind... was inspired by the breakup of a ten-year obsession with love when Marina was left saddened, maddened and completely alone with the hollowness of an unexpected fate. At almost the same time, large planes flew into tall buildings and the roar of corporate America lifted the veil from off its writhing grin.

Wind On the Firecracker Of The Building Next Door, the songs was recorded in Ernesto Diaz- Infante & Marjorie Sturm's living room with Ernesto at the four-track sculpting silently under headphones like a Buddhist welder. Marjorie edited films in the next room incubating the baby piper. Recorded in an afternoon, half of the compositions were preconceived while others were on-the-spot brain splurts inspired by glimpses of words, phrases and mediocre doodles in Marina's journal. Ernesto Diaz-Infante welds them together with sonic interludes. Lance Grabmiller mixes them with caramel ease.


BIO:

poet/guitarist/singer-songwriter Marina Lazzara was born and raised in Easton, Pennsylvania where the Lehigh River falls into the Delaware. After attending college, bartending and lying around the Atlantic shoreline for five years in Virginia, she moved to San Francisco and graduated from the New College of California with a Masters of Arts in Poetics and published a book of poems entitled The Backdrop Line. Her appreciation for music began as a toddler when her mother encouraged her and her sisters to sing in bed before falling asleep, and her two older sisters & cousins taught her guitar, drumming and songwriting. From there on, she spent most of her teenage years playing guitar and drums in a neighbor’s garage, talking about consciousness expansion and worshipping 70’s rock posters. She avoided structured ideas of “a band” in her twenties, seeing it as a great example of capitalistic personality exploitation. Instead, she opted to jam with friends and a bottle of whiskey in obscure practice places like a squatted converted boy’s bathroom. It wasn’t until her early thirties that she accepted “the band” as a true artistic experience, giving up the artsy poetry scene contaminated by narcissism and the creative activist scene contaminated with dogma. Although the indie-rock scene is diseased with trust fund brats, she found solace with some of her favorite working class musicians and joined, created, moved into her obsession with songwriting, head banging, and singing with angels.

Besides ambitious endeavors toward a life of creativity, selfish social activism to enhance the urban imagination and endless schemes to dodge student loan payments, Marina now works with the homeless and studies Botany & Herbalism. She has been in various bands including the rotating idie-rock trio, Blue Gum Art as well as Liesl’s Wet Dress, the Abstractions, Smile God Loves You, This and Poetiks (www.poetiks.com). Currently, she plays rhythm guitar with the SF band, the Rabbles (www.myspace/therabbles.com), who will release a CD this summer on Aboriginal Records entitled RabbleRabble.

Marina is finishing up a manuscript for a second book of poems and currently working on songs for a second solo project to be released this fall.

reviews

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  • Quite an interesting set of songs...
    author: Jerry Kranitz, Aural Innovations

    I'm not familiar with musician and poet Marina Lazzara's work, but I couldn't wait to spin this CD after reading in the promo sheet about "noise folk" and "where experimental meets the song". Sure my tastes tend toward the strange and freaky, but I still enjoy a well written song and a pleasing melody. So anyone who attempts to bring those worlds together is going to arouse my interest. After a bit of drifting noise, a guitar begins to strum a pleasant melody and Marina starts to sing. Recorded in a single afternoon in Ernesto Diaz- Infante & Marjorie Sturm's living room, the music has a lo-fi but heartfelt quality. Marina has a beautiful voice and her acoustic guitar strumming is simple but entrancing. Noise patterns serve a transitional role between some of the songs, providing part of the album's experimental edge. Other than that the first several tracks seem fairly accessible. I like the slightly winding phased guitar efx heard on "Words, Birds, Sun Stickers and a Road", which take the song into an otherworldly dimension. But starting with "The Backdrop Line" the music devolves into heavy sonic aggression with a harsh stoner guitar dirge that backs Marina's vocals. Ditto for the next track, "Ferris Wheel Song". Wow, those took me pleasantly by surprise. But Marina continues to bounce around, having torn up the listeners insides a bit she soon returns to the melodic acoustic folk that opened the album. Quite an interesting set of songs. It doesn't work consistently throughout the album, but I did come away from it feeling like I'd heard something a bit different.

  • This is a fascinating collection of songs...
    author: Anna Maria Stjärnell, Collected Sounds Women In Music

    This is a fascinating collection of songs by poet and songwriter Lazzara. She sings in an artlessly disarming way and plays the guitar quietly but intensely. "Flower Tree" is a minimal yet strong song. "Words, Birds, Sun Stickers and a Road" is a quieter take on Patti Smith's rock poetry. The static hiss of "Sun on The Moon" is accompanied by words of pure whimsy. "Ferris Wheel Song" has a dark ambience to it. "Blue Fish Bowl" is abrasive yet restrained. This album is probably not for everyone but adventurous souls will adore it.

  • Very nice emotional release
    author: Cynthia Lombard, KFJC On-Line Reviews

    San Francisco musician and poet (she’s even credentialed with a Master’s degree in Poetics) Marina Lazzara puts out a nice debut. It’s just her voice and guitar, laid down in one day on 4-track by Ernesto Diaz-Infante. It ranges from jangly to fuzzy and pissed off, with underlying break-up and bad-world-events part of her thematic inspiration. Some songs were composed before the recording session, whereas others were improvised, although you’d be hard-pressed to figure out which is which. Very nice emotional release.

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