Multi-instrumentalist and trained pianist Maria Chiara Argirò has released her textural and emotional new single “Greenarp”. Her forthcoming album and Innovative Leisure debut, Forest City, sees its release next Friday and is Argirò’s first full venture into electronic production. 

“‘Greenarp’ is about experiencing a beautiful natural scene and a reoccurring dream of being in nature,” she reveals. “The dream is blurred together with the reality of waking up with, almost, at the end of the song – not knowing what’s real. I wrote the instrumental part mainly on my organelle arpeggio synth as I wanted to create an abstract sound layered with detuned synths into the production, in order to create a blurred and uncertain dreamlike soundscape.”

Maria Chiara Argirò (pronounced ma-REE-ah key-AH-rah r-gee-ROW) marks herself as an exciting new name in electronic, jazz-fusion. After quietly weaving her way around the UK jazz, classical and electronic worlds, the trained pianist (since the age of nine) has now cemented herself as a key player in the capital’s multi-national jazz scene. Maria has released a few solo and collaborative records (Flow was The Guardian’s jazz album of the month and nominated as album of the year in the Jazz Revelations Awards), but her forthcoming album, Forest City feels like the turning of a page as she liberates herself from the structures of jazz.

Forest City, Maria finds a glistening thread between these movements: where jazz meets Kelly Lee Owens, Jon Hopkins and Radiohead. It’s a concept record, about the “duality of nature and city”, where organic sounds and textures seem to flow above the urban sprawl.

Though the album has dark undertones, it’s not all doom and gloom: in her earthy metropolis, a certain optimism glows through. “It’s about being conscious of the world we live in and how careful we need to be,” Maria explains. “At the end of the day, there is hope”.

Forest City was recorded and self-produced between her bedroom and her studio with the precious help of her longtime collaborators and electronic producers, In a Sleeping Mood and mixing engineer Alex Killpartrick. And, crucially, she is singing for the first time, too – her airy, otherworldly vocals on “Blossom” and “Clouds” especially resemble Emiliana Torrini or a singer in a smoky, late-night club, alone under the spotlight on the stage.

Forest City sees its release via Innovative Leisure on May 6th. To pre-order / pre-save the album, go here.

Photo Courtesy: Alexandra Waespi