Terami Hirsch
Gig Seeker Pro

Terami Hirsch

Band Pop Singer/Songwriter

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"Terami Hirsch: Entropy 29"


In my review of Terami Hirsch's last CD, To The Bone, I criticized her foray into techno territory. The artificial sounds did not match her warm voice and poetic lyrics. This time, on Entropy 29, she's experimenting with a gothic/classical sound, and now my world makes sense again. This works. This is darkly dramatic orchestral pop, which flows so naturally with the occasionally unsettling lyrics and earnest, yearning vocal that Hirsch does so well. This is her best album yet.

This CD feels like going to the opera and seeing tormented spirits floating through the audience. It's like watching an art school film with a soundtrack by Kate Bush. Delicate ballads with piano notes that fall like raindrops. Lyrics that are sometimes nightmarish. But then, Hirsch has never been any other way. She puts her visions right up front in the opening track, "Mission To The Moon":

Shattered in my mouth
There are splinters in these words
Thorns and roots and tangles
I have spoken
Then spitting out my teeth
Into a little silver cup
I wake up cold with eyes wide open ...

I'm glad I'm listening to this CD in daylight.

I noticed a common theme in these tracks – the strength of something small in the face of something overwhelming. "Little Light," a song about a small flame holding back the darkness, feels like a song of a small spirit holding its own in a big dark world. Then there’s the line in "Drifting": "My spine of glass won’t hold our fractured form."

Lush and theatrical, Hirsch's music holds nothing back. She is a bold, brave artist, pouring everything out of her soul, even when it makes me worry about her sanity. "Memory Picture" offers lyrics of emotional torment and probably some mental illness. If she didn't have the music in which to find refuge, I'd be using the online Yellow Pages to find suicide watch counselors in Burbank and telling them to keep their eyes open. But there is beauty and magic here, enveloping the pain and soothing the soul. Hirsch is finding her own way with this CD, a small spirit holding her own in this big dark world. - Indie Music


"Review of Entropy 29"

Here's where I usually say, if you like such-and-such artist, you'll like this artist. But she really doesn't sound like anyone else. So I'll just say, if you like music, you need to get this record. Don't even ask me to pick out stand out songs, because I'll just name them all. - Collectedsounds.com


"Top 10 Artists to Watch Out for in 2008"

LA-based singer/songwriter Terami Hirsch is set to release a new CD sometime soon. Details are a bit scarce at the moment but judging by her previous releases, it is sure to be a winner. Terami's music is firmly rooted in the obscure - anything but conventional. Even the method of recording and producing the record is unconventional. Meditative and deeply cerebral are probably the words that can best describe her music. - KGRL/LAist.com


Discography

A Broke Machine (2008)
Entropy 29 (2005)
Little Light EP (2005)
To the Bone (2002)
All Girl Band (1999)

Photos

Bio

Like handmade creations, Terami Hirsch's music is constructed with a tempting blend of tender interest and obsessive fixation. Without the advantage of working in a visual medium, this Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter uses her home studio and lo-fi electronics as her art board - forming deeply personal, highly textured alternative albums.

Writing songs since age 11, Terami's early scribbles were intended merely as an emotional outlet - never meant for an audience. However, she was spontaneously inspired and recorded her first album, All Girl Band in 1999. The unflinching, intimate approach of All Girl Band, found an eager following and this encouraged Terami to continue experimenting with the recording process. Following her debut, came To the Bone (2002) and Entropy 29 (2005). Both reflect her emerging interest in electronic sounds, as well as demonstrating more intricate, and evocative subject matters. A Broke Machine is her most recent studio album, and is firmly rooted in the experimental-pop ethos developed over the life of her previous projects.

What sets Terami's music apart from other piano-based artists, is her near disregard for the purity of the acoustic instrument. Preferring to work with keyboards and digital editing software, Terami shapes songs as if they were paper and glue, allowing imperfections to texture her otherwise meditative and cerebral music. This approach is surprising to some - as many people equate digital with polished, smooth sounds. Terami's music personifies the heart in the machine, as she pushes the creative edges of reputably heartless software. Terami explains, "In album production, it's exciting to create unexpected terrain within the landscape of a simple song. By using my computer as an instrument, the whole process becomes flexible and dynamic in ways that continue to push how I express myself on record."

In 2007, Terami began recording A Broke Machine - her most provocative album to date. Self-produced, the album is intricately mixed by Tommy Walter (Abandoned Pools, The Eels, Glacier Hiking). The songs are detailed and passionate, and written within her self-enforced guideline: “to enjoy the process”. Plucking inspiration from her favorite subjects ("the things we can't have" and "the things we can never understand"), A Broke Machine revolves around issues of the heart.

Terami is an introvert - irresistibly drawn to intensive, isolated creation. For this reason, her live performances are rare, introspective events; which are quirky and surprisingly stripped of the electronics she uses during album production. Her cosy vocals and thorough piano skills highlight the appeal of her music - expressive songwriting and vulnerable charm.

Able to shape hand-crafted, electronic recordings around such delicate and innate songwriting, Terami's music is a profound reflection of what current technology can offer independent musicians - the freedom to experiment. While continuing to delve into both lyrical esoterics and musical expressiveness, Terami strives for a balance between those imperfections that make us human and the ways we look beyond ourselves and continue to grow.

A Broke Machine is available April 15, 2008 on Madstone Records.