Perila

(This article’s English version was produced with AI-assisted translation)

Lost among the languor of evanescent chords, blurred basslines, and a delicate voice that moves slowly between chanting and the hypnotic whisper typical of ASMR tradition. Perila — the alias of Alexandra Zakharenko, a young Russian artist now at home in Berlin — has followed, since her 2019 debut, a coherent path within an aesthetic that is as gentle as it is uncompromising. "The Air Outside Feels Crazy Right Now" is a collection of tracks previously released on EPs, and it drifts through visions of frozen landscapes, dormant forests, and an aura of solitude embraced with the serenity of someone who has found shelter in a home among the trees — as if she were a sister to Grouper.

It’s a formula that hints at psychedelic folk, but filtered through the blurred lens of the contemporary Berlin scene. Truth be told, there’s more of a folk echo than actual structure here: instrumentation is largely electronic, save for the occasional interference — like the gentle touch of piano keys played with grace over distant, contemplative vocal melodies (“Barefeeter”). Perila's is a folk album in spirit, not in form, one that conjures up a pastoral imagery through algorithmic abstraction. A nature recoded into digital languages (“Fossil”), blending laptop music with flickers of bass and electric guitar — the only tangible remnants of a psychedelic tradition (“Gooshy”).

It’s a work that follows a clearer trajectory than the unsettling undertones of her better-known releases: there’s none of the mystical turbulence of “How Much Time It Is Between You and Me?”, nor the haunting shadows that lurked in “Intrinsic Rhythm”. Here, tension gives way to stillness, in a kind of secret conversation between the self and an untouched ecosystem. Lost in waves of lullaby-like vocals (“Everyday Hope”), the album at times recalls the otherworldly quality of Ayami Suzuki, or perhaps a vision of Vashti Bunyan gently brushing the keys of a long-forgotten piano, in a house now abandoned to time (“Unseen”).

It’s hard to say what will remain of this inner whisper. The eight fragments collected here feel like a conversation within the folds of the unspoken, a low-voiced discourse made of sparse words, from which something begins to surface, vibrating underneath. The premise carries an almost enchanted allure, even if not everything, necessarily, will be revealed to us. Still, there lingers a sense of anticipation—the kind that waits for what Perila might still want to share.

25/04/2025