LUISAโs new EP RISE arrives as a compact but richly layered three-track journey through geography, memory, protest, and rebirth. Released on December 5th, the project pulls together influences from Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine, as emotional landscapes shaped by history and personal experience. Each track is a place and a moment in time, refracted through LUISAโs hybrid palette of folk instrumentation, electronic production, and field recordings that carry the breath of real streets and real people.
It all begins with โEnchant,โ a track that truly earns its name. The song opens with warm, sonorous echoing wails, sounding like ancient voices rising from a mountainside. Organic percussion enters slowly, grounding the piece before electronic beats slip in and fuse with the polyphonic chanting of the Caucasus. LUISAโs glimmering melody floats above it all, shimmering like sunlight catching metal. Built from Georgian drums, Salamuri reeds, and sound recordings collected during her time in Tbilisi, the track becomes a spell, as an invocation of place, tradition, and the quiet magic of cultural memory.
Then comes โRise,โ the emotional core of the EP and its most politically charged moment. Made from warped protest recordings and sounds captured in Minsk during the 2020 Belarus uprising, the track carries urgency and defiance. Warm fuzzy textures wrap around deep, punching bass, while hard beats drive forward with the pulse of a marching crowd. Aย fragile yet persistent glimmering melody flickers above. Itโs a dynamic, catchy, and unexpectedly nuanced, as a protest chant reimagined as a dance-floor elegy.
Finally, โSpringโ blooms from Ukraineโs peacetime, before displacement and war reshaped LUISAโs familyโs life. Warm, fuzzy sonics hold the track steady while hard beat drops add grit. Whimsical, exotic, and hypnotic woodwind comes in. The Sopilka winds through the mix like a mythic creature. The track feels mystical, mesmerizing, almost ritualistic, as though spring itself were being conjured back into existence.
Across RISE, LUISA captures how sound carries history, how landscapes sing, how uprisings echo, how home can be both memory and melody. Itโs a brief EP, but it leaves a long afterglow, because resilience can be heard as clearly as it can be felt.
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Review by: Naomi Joan