Samarah

A Madison, WI resident since 2000, Samarah seems to be cultivating an image of minimalist elegance; she has put out two brief EPs, both with sparse music and sparser packaging. The former fits loosely into the category of "trip-hop", though it's more trip than hop -- aside from Samarah's despairing, echoing voice, What is Beautiful's vibe is nowhere near the more pop-oriented efforts purveyed by the likes of Portishead and Massive Attack. Instead, it sounds like what you'd hear in your head after the tenth day in a sensory deprivation chamber. The music's glitchy, subsonic bubbling offers only the barest suggestion of melody, leaving Samarah's mysterious vocals as the focal point. Her disconnected reverb-soaked musings, often at odds with the rhythms beneath them, only increase the sense of being lost in an inner wilderness.
Samarah does very well at creating textured mood pieces with a relatively limited palette; the swelling atmospheric pads in "Spark" uplift even as they disquiet. What is Beautiful's first two tracks, "Angel's Face" and "Pale Honey", are similar to one another in their subdued click-beats and repetition of lyrics and phrasing. The disc's closer and title track is its most song-like, as Samarah's singing follows something approaching a conventional "verse" pattern (though it retreats into a phased AM-radio-type effect). At twelve minutes long, the EP is difficult to really get into, so it's hard to recommend it as background music, but it's quite lovely; put it in the CD changer on shuffle, along with your Bowery Electric and Bardo Pond discs, and you won't be disappointed. - SPLENDID MAGAZINE 2004

Her ambient music may sometimes sound fragile but there is nothing frail about this artist; she exudes confidence and competence. Samarah (Sarah Krug) is a musican, visual artist, mother and all-around busy individual. She moved to Madison in 2000 to go to school and now works as a graphic designer by day while elevating club music to art at night. Her life has creatively evolved time and again because shw is open to new ideas and has the initiative and ingenuity to transform things into something new and uniquely her own.

Samarah grew up in Fond du Lac and was introduced to the electronic/rave scene in her junior year of highschool. She developed the technical skills to make her own electronic music through hours of experimentation and begain playing out about three years ago. Her lovely voice is reminiscent of Beth Gibbons of Portishead. She's cool but accessible, with alluring vocals and electronic soundscapes that are subdued but soothingly listenable. If Neitzshe were alive he might dub her (no pun intended) "the perfect female sound"; or had 2001: A Space Odyssey predicted the future of music, her style could have been the prototype. You can sample for yourself and check for future shows at www.samarahspace.com

To read the full interview:
http://www.samarahspace.com/ricksint.htm - RICKS CAFE (MADISON) 2005

Samarah stares intently at the monitor of her laptop computer. At the moment, Sarah is "on stage" — the featured musical attraction. Her set shifts back and forth between cool ambience and jittery technobotics. With the click of a button, she’s triggering and filtering loops, sequencing samples, altering tones. She plays her synthesizer in time to the beat of a record and then she picks up a mike and adds ethereal, reverb-soaked vocals to her mix. - THE ISTHMUS (MADISON)