Balance

Blue vinyl, cover design by Dorothee Dähler, features scented inner record sleeve, scent by In’n’Out Fragrances. The new album of Swiss artist Martina Lussi joins what no longer is conjoined. Conceived and realized over a period marked by changes in both the private sphere and the world at large, none of which were thinkable before, Balance brings together the before and after. “Fragments of Attention” is the fulcrum of the album: it separates the first half, written before Covid, from the second, composed during the lockdown. The six-minute track serves as a rupture and bridge between a career at its by no means definitive apex and a new uncertainty in various aspects of life
In spite of the division, Balance is held together by a common feature: Lussi’s voice, with which every composition began. Her singing, modified by effects, is supplemented by other sounds, which are light at times, bittersweet at others, and sometimes replace her voice altogether. Lussi’s singing plunges “Meditation on the Multitab” on the first half of the album into a cosmic soundscape; occasionally a rhythm irrupts into it. On “Time Lapse,” a track from the second half, the artist’s singsong articulates rhythmical elements and propels them towards a reluctant euphoria
As an album, Balance appears open and fragile, at times even vulnerable, but Lussi’s relentless openness derives from the immense strength needed to weather changes both small and large. Following the album’s production, the artist had Balance translated visually and olfactorily. The Amsterdam-based perfumer Niklaus Mettler concocted a scent based on the album, which accompanies the release. The artwork, into which the scent is integrated, was designed by the Zurich-based graphic designer Dorothee Dähler