Gaia Guarda plays a very intimate yet scary version of TripHop - that is also remindful of Gothic music. And all that with a rather unusual set of instruments.
TripHop is a genre that often plays with the future – Gaia Guarda uses it as a basis for her Gothic inspired music whose base features three very old instruments: The cello, the violin and the harp. Montreal-based Gaia plays the harp while Michelle and Jessica (who play with Gaia in the metal band Uriel) contribute the other two. Together with drummer Rocky Gray she wrote a record that is as much looking into the future, as it based in the past and reflecting the present. The combination of a classical string basis with triphop beats is not really new, strings have been used in the Bristol-sound for decades already. However, on Gaia’s debut album it is different, as the strings are not ornaments to an otherwise very beat-oriented music but as the centerpiece of it. Nevertheless, do not envision the music to be like Joanna Newsom only because of the harp – it is different and much closer to some synthpop acts like Wolfsheim or VNV Nation. Her music is at the same time classical and new – thus a good example of neo-classical music. The lyrics are often very introspective and reveal a person not rested but haunted. “I ran across the world / You won’t find me, I must survive / I can’t explain the force pushing me to never give up on you” – she is running away but at the same time doesn’t want to forget a certain person. At times, this sound like a masochistic perspective on one’s own pain and its roots. Gaia Guarda is surely a very well-trained artist to watch as she breaks down some boundaries and steps onto unknown territory, connecting the past, present and future of songwriting into a new approach to music. If she then gains a perspective (in her lyrics) outside of her own, not only ‘relying’ on her own experience – then she can become the next big indie voice.
