Laurel Halo (USA)

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Laurel Halo is a Detroit-born electronic music composer, performance artist and DJ currently based in Berlin. Drawing from a wide range of musical lineages, her thoughtful approach has allowed her to maintain a distinctive aesthetic through stylistically different production, spanning pop, ambient, experimental electronics, and film soundtracks.
Her debut album, Quarantine (2012), was released by the pioneering London label Hyperdub; the combination of voice without artifice and the use of distant-toned electronics convinced critics, with the recognition of the Album of the Year by The Wire magazine.
Two instrumental albums were subsequently released, Chance of Rain (2013) again with Hyperdub and In Situ (2015) with the Honest Jon’s label. Both albums were developed from Laurel Halo’s live sets in those years: dance floor melodic material made with a hardware configuration.
In 2015 he collaborated with John Cale.
His fourth album, Dust, from 2017 with Hyperdub, once again garners critical acclaim; it combines the funk aesthetics of the hardware machine of the previous versions with a free and languid singing style.
In 2018 he composed the soundtrack for the experimental feature-length documentary Possessed, directed by the Dutch design group Metahaven. In the same year he also released the mini-LP Raw Silk Uncut Wood for the Parisian label Latency; a collection of instrumental pieces of classical inspiration, accompanied by the percussion of Eli Keszler and the cellist Oliver Coates.
In 2019 he released his contribution to the historic DJ-Kicks series, followed by an extensive DJ tour in Europe, North America and Asia.
In 2020 she was resident artist at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. He also released the soundtrack of the film Possessed as an album for the London label Vinyl Factory.

In 2021 Halo announced his new Awe label with a monthly show on NTS; the May show, a long and very original ambient journey, was co-produced by the Schauspielhaus Zürich. She also joined the latest line-up of the Moritz von Oswald Trio, which released the Dissent LP on Modern Recordings / BMG in August 2021. Further collaborations in 2021 involved a performance with cellist Oliver Coates at the Semibreve Festival in Braga. in Portugal, and a performance with the London Contemporary Orchestra at the Southbank Center in London.
INA-GRM has commissioned a new multi-channel piece for piano and electronics, which premiered at the Présences électronique festival in Paris, in April 2022.