Intimate Neo-Folk. Hypnotic odd-meter grooves, bearing haunting, eastern tainted melodies.
Evocative stories of love, harvest, death and beyond...
TUi MAMAKi (formally of Mamaku Project) disappeared to Bulgaria in 2014... where is Bulgaria? It is in her childhood record collection, in her impossible dreams, as far east in Europe as you can go, and now, deeply woven into her voice and work, as she trained for 3 years in the methods of that mysterious Bulgarian folklore. FLY however, is a distill. MAMAKi wanted to hear from a new silence - what music would come through if she listened, post "Bulgaria"? What aspects of the fascinating music she had studied there had been digested, and how would these come through into composition? Holed up in a soviet style block, in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, through the heat of 2016 summer, armed with a Little Martin acoustic guitar and an addiction to picking newfound rhythms, a collection of new songs emerged and were recorded in the South of France that autumn. Brought back to NZ in 2018, the result, in the words of others:
"Stunning. Sparse instrumentation, powerful lyrics, alternative deliveries…
We really need this kind of magic." (NZ Musician)
"Hypnotic, intoxicating, beguiling… a balm of sorts, the right tonic." (Simon Sweetman _ Off The Tracks)
"Deeply evocative & contemplative, with ancestral voices calling from just beyond the veil...” (Jacquie Walters _ music.net.nz)