Avital Raz

Avital Raz makes fairy music.
Something in her voice envelopes you and creates such a peaceful atmosphere, it's difficult to explain.
(I recommend listening with earphones for full comprehension). - Morning candy-music blog

AVITAL RAZ is a singer/songwriter at the start of a probably, long and beloved career. ”Strange Love Songs” is her first release, but she has recorded a full length album to be released in 2011 due to certain copyright matters.
Hailing from Israel, being an acid folk enthusiast and a student of Indian music, this six track short EP actually displays many, many influences, and a sound more well-worked and strong than what seldom comes out of an entire orchestra. It’s though always rather dark and completely dreamy. The lyrics are fine reflections on love, loss and surroundings, sung in English. I’d love to hear some native tongue, not only because music is often best that way, but also to add yet another touch of originality to these songs.

The music is most often emerging from Avital’s fine-tunes guitar that she plucks with great enthusiasm and love. She also plays the tanpura, an Indian instrument you’ve probably heard a couple of times without knowing what it was. Some friends has been included to play further guitars, bass. banjo, drums and bansuri which is another Indian instrument, a flute to be more accurate.

I could really recommend the first track, ”Migraine in Katmandu”, which is pretty much a straight forward folky singer/songwriter explosion of feelings and musicality. In fact, all the tracks are in some way or another good enough to be mentioned as recommendations, all but the fourth one ”A Strange Love Song” which is probably a little too prolix for my taste.

The similarities to another Israeli female artist I reviewed some months ago are prominent. I’m speaking about NOA BABAYOF of course. This is though a little more traditional and a little less orchestrated. But both could be our new LINDA PERHACS and both are really something to keep an eye on. Somehow, this also gets me in the WALDSONNE mood, thanks to the sparkling vocals, the ethnic influences and the feeling overall. Splendid. - The Shadows commence webzine

When having toured as a young child with a children’s choir and further classical training, from early music to avant-garde, she decided to study an additional six years of Druphad vocal music in India. It took her to a variety of experiences before she returned home and settled down her thoughts and feelings, into a personal song album, in close cooperation with guitar player and devoted sitar student Itzik Yona. It contains the intentions of ragas like moods that give structure to her experiences in lyrical poetry and with it associated improvised emotions, inspirations derived after a disappointed love affair, and where each previous influence that has led to this moment, comes back spontaneously like a feedback in style and mood, from western song expression to Indian wonder, mixing the bliss moments of experiences with the sad turnouts, the beauty of wonders and the richness from the building up of abilities in noticing different ways of expressions. The taught experiences are now engaged more loosely and spontaneously into these songs, with smooth rhythms, delicate guitar picking moods, and Indian flute. “Weep” arranged with overdubbed vocals shows spiritual and emotional strength, and places herself as a troubadour who had just travelled around. This seems to be a 16th century piece. A recommended delicate document, sweet in character.

- Gerald Van Waes, Psychedelic Folk Magazine, Belgium.

"Raz's rich, sonorous, generously inflected voice is a veritable gift of nature. But far from leaving it at that, she also embelishes it with alot of polish and shades, achieving notewrthy artistic results." - Uri Eppstien, Jerusalem Post

"Strange Love Songs" succeeded in places where other albums have yet to succeed, mainly because they didn't even try: to transport me spiritually from where I am to another place, another time, another culture... Avital Raz is a suberb songwriter. - Avihu Gaon, Qube magazine

Born in Israel, Of American Parents, Avital Raz has studied at The Rubin Academy Of Music and also lived in India learning classical Indian song (Druphad) with Master Ritwik Sanyal. All these influences can be heard in her debut EP, a shimmering, dream-like collection containing six beautiful, enchanting and utterly compelling songs that demand attention.



There are shades of many of the current crop of female folk artists to be found In opening track “Migraine In Katmandu”, but these are fleeting thoughts, the music defiantly her own, a drifting meditation that is beautifully crafted and arranged, with the floating Bansuri lines, the final flourish. Even gentler is “Weep”, ghostly notes, supporting fragile vocals, the lyrics based on 16th C poetry, the whole piece a breath of wind on a still day. Third track “Migraine In Jerusalem”, seems to relate directly to that experience, a sad lament that is filled with love, trying to banish the pain through song.



Seemingly about the fact that you can’t choose who you fall in love with, the title track is undoubtedly the finest track on the disc. Here, the different cultural strands are bought together into a droning and emotional whole, the song weaving its magic deep inside you, the lyrics perfectly matched by the music, the tension slowly building as the song progresses.



After this intense piece, “In You” is a gentle spiritual love song that barely exists, whilst final track “All Pains” seems to seek nirvana through oblivion, the cessation of all things leaving only the truth. (Simon Lewis) - Terrascope Online Reviews, Simon Lewis

This young female singer/songwriter from Israel has a superbly utilized crystal clear contralto voice, and writes bewitchingly beautiful, seductively dark melodic songs as well on this inaugural six-song EP. Her lyrics are eccentric and intriguingly original in their somewhat obliquely dramatic approach. The eclectic instrumentation blends acoustic and electric instrumentation to frame her considerable vocal skills. Featuring highly effective use of conventional instruments like banjo, guitars, bass, and drums with tanpura and bansuri.

- Dream magazine, George Parsons

In this half-hour EP, Avital Raz shows why several classical orchestras chose her as singer, though not a shred of Strange Love Songs reflects the Western classicalist tradition overtly, skewing much more satisfyingly to a fusion of folk, Indian (something of a cross between ghazal and slow raga), and Jewish religious music (piyutim). That blend of modes perfectly accommodates her melismatic approach, but fundamental classical training also figures in, as Raz's compositional choices are superb. Despite being spare throughout, not a note is less than perfect and the development of her melody lines deceptive, reflecting an immersion in subtleties that escape most musics.

Raz plays guitar and tanpura but also tracks herself for backing vocals when others aren't sessioned in. Her vocals and compositions make the CD truly intrigue, Weep perhaps being the best exemplar of that. A short track, the song centers a duet of gracefully swooping and intertwining voices (both hers) matrixed in sketched tones minimally but beautifully opening the heavens up to the pain and sadness of the human sphere. In key places throughout the CD, Ofra Avni's bansuri becomes equally crucial, as evanescent, but also as sirenic, as Raz's presence.

This is music as much for existential reflection as for aesthetic contemplation, a disc melding several worlds and many concerns into one. There's a haunting beauty imbuing every measure, drawing the mind along with the senses. The lyrics to Migraine in Katmandu reflect the schism of the apparent and the real, the perceived and the actual, and all the infinite problems arising from dualism. In fact, though the CD only very peripherally touches upon it in a brief reference to old Chinese paintings, there's a strong affinity to ukiyo-e, the Japanese floating world devoted to escaping the pain of phenomena for the grandeur of beauty and art. Such is the human condition, and such is what Strange Love Songs is intimately wrapped around. - A review written for the Folk & Acoustic Music Exchange by Mark S. Tucker