Music
Press
Juta’s debut has an air of abandoned amusement parks and winters that won’t seem to end. But this Italian-Canadian band led by the fascinating Barbara Adly lets its folk-rock ripen in a sun that already shines bright. - XL (Italy)
The musicians in Running Through Hoops are on a relentless quest for perfect pop tenderness. - MAZ (Germany)
Montrealer Barbara Adly and Italian Pierluigi Aielli are the masterminds behind Juta and they have created a beautiful record: Running Through Hoops. Barbara Adly’s fragile yet crystalline voice combines with the structured and essential arrangements of acoustic instruments to create an atmosphere that is full of grace and almost painfully intimate. This atmosphere paints any landscape outside your window in strangely suffused light and inevitably leads you to expect something even more beautiful beyond the next hill, as long as you keep moving. Unbelievable. We are excited. - Roadtracks (Germany)
A great little delightful record.
- Guitar Magazin (Germany)
The fascination Juta exudes will win you over. The intrinsic contrast between the lyrics’ quest for meaning and a brand of musicality that is pensive and aware yields fantastic results. This quintet places all its bets on making vague allusions that will linger on in the mind of its listeners, as well as on building an intimate atmosphere and undeniable affinities. The second to last track, a successful cover of Protection by Massive Attack, fits in wonderfully with the rest of Running Through Hoops. - Opak Magazin (Germany)
This Italian-Canadian band gets everything right with its debut […].
The quintet delivers a wonderful, genuine and darn fine indie record. Juta is one to watch. 4.5/6
- http://www.gestromt.de (Germany)
The best songs are the more pared down ones, the ones in which the carefulness in Barbara’s voice overwhelms you completely[…]. The closeness is so striking that you hold your breath for fear of ruining the mood. - http://www.lukinzine.se (Sweden)
It’s impossible not to love [Running Through Hoops].[…] Its songs are contemplative and happy, dreamy and wide awake, childlike and mature, but never forced or deliberately difficult. They are simply beautiful. - http://www.gaesteliste.de (Germany)
This Italian-Canadian band presents a remarkable debut and promises to deliver more delicate indie/pop gems in the future.
- http://www.cdstarts.de (Germany)
These eleven tracks are already among the best this young 2010 has to offer. A debut album could not be more beautiful, including their cover of one of Massive Attack’s best songs: “Protection.” Great! Grand! Greatest! Juta!
- http://www.elektrolurch.com (Germany)
It leaves nothing to be desired. The emotionally intimate and playful songs hark back to Canadian colleagues like Stars and Arcade Fire, but with a more filigree-like calm and fragility. Jazz rhythms meet unforgettable melodies. The songwriting is perfect and creates quite the atmosphere. Simply a dream! - http://www.independentkicks.de (Germany)
As of the first few notes, you can hear the sincerity and honesty in singer/songwriter Adly’s voice.
- http://relevant.at (Austria)
[This album is] reminiscent of a travel log set to music. Barbara Adly invites listeners of Running Through Hoops to accompany her for forty-five minutes as she stops along her way. Who could turn down an invitation from such a wonderful voice?
- http://www.popconnection.de (Germany)
To fans of mellow pop songs along the lines of Cat Power and Mazzy Star, Juta’s first album will be a welcome release.
- http://www.rootstime.be (Belgium)
Songs arranged with great sensitivity and a wonderful singer are the main ingredients to this melancholy and beautiful indie-pop.
- http://www.wasteofmind.de (Germany)
The first fifteen minutes are practically perfect, enough to make you believe the album you’re holding in your hands is a masterpiece. […]With each listen, you realize this is an album you cannot do without.[…]
Juta’s music and Barbara Adly’s sweet voice should be listened to in scorching seasons and should be played for newborns to help them sleep so that their dreams may be populated by characters who inspire trust and who are sound advisors that will teach them to be brave in order to face life more optimistically […].
- http://www.comunicazioneinterna.it (Italy)
Thanks to Barbara Adly, their debut album Running Through Hoops will win you over from the very first note.
- http://www.popmonitor.de (Germany)
Discography
Running Through Hoops - released April 16th, 2010 on CD and limited edition (200 clear vinyl and 99 gold vinyl) LP by Arctic Rodeo Recordings
Photos
Bio
Juta’s seed was sown one colder than usual April when Pierluigi Aielli came for an extended visit from Italy to stay with Barbara Adly in her native Montreal, where she has collaborated with such talented local acts as Plants and Animals, J.F. Robitaille and Olivier Alary. They holed themselves up in her plateau apartment, as the cold seeped in through the windows and doors, tingeing their first compositions.
Soon Adly began to travel back and forth between Italy and Montreal. As a duo, the intimacy and stark fragility of their performances were cause for many an electric evening as audiences sat perfectly still, hanging off every ethereal note and mesmerized by Aielli’s hypnotic picking style. Eventually they were joined by Dario Mazzucco, a fixture on the northern-Italian jazz circuit, Pietro Canali, who had been plying his piano skills in some of Italy’s most successful indie bands, and Ettore Formicone, friend, singer-songwriter and double-bassist extraordinaire.
They honed their arrangements, started to feel their chemistry as a band mature and soon it was time to cross the Atlantic again, but going the other way, and this time five strong.
On that eventful trip, Juta played its first North American shows in New York and Montreal and then enlisted the sonic savvy of Howard Bilerman at the hotel2tango studio to record their debut album. It had been a dream of theirs to join the long line of illustrious Montreal acts who had also chosen to record at hotel2tango, such as Arcade Fire, The Dears and Silver Mt. Zion (whose Thierry Amar plays his century-old double bass as a special guest on “Monday’s Haze”). Juta had fallen in love with the sound of the recordings that have passed through Bilerman’s hands and wanted to produce their first album using solely analog means, not only for that warm sound graced with the characteristic hiss of rolling tape, but also to record live. The resulting album is called Running Through Hoops and it was released April 16th 2010 by Arctic Rodeo Recordings.
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