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Laryssa Kim (BE)

Artist

Laryssa Kim is a rare type. An artist who has seized the precious ability to synthesise divergent sounds and practices into a wonderous and coheren whole, her rousing articulation of music’s most sensuous modes straddles both the academic and worldly as deftly as she scales ethereal heights.

Now based in Brussels, Laryssa is an Italo-Congolese singer and composer with an arresting set of influences. Her first forays into music took place in Rome writing and performing with reggae musicians and DJs. Here she honed her instinctual strengths in a predominantly live setting. She relocated to Amsterdam in 2008 and immersed herself in contemporary dance and physical theatre, broadening her toolset in an environment that supported and encouraged playful experimentation around composition. Basing herself in Brussels since 2013, Laryssa went on to formally pursue her interest in electroacoustics by completing a master’s program at the Royal Conservatory of Mons in acousmatic music composition. Amid these studies she took the natural step of establishing her own artistic project to develop an intimate, personalised route through her rich experience of music’s different mechanisms and models.

The landscape of Laryssa’s music is impassioned and mesmerising. Employing her voice as her central instrument, hypnotic swells of elegant lyrical forms are scattered around finely braided electronics and instrumental motifs that gather into tender song structures. Her suite of effects and looping tools propel her voice through delicately balanced compositions that place her between varying experimental practices. Presented in a live performance setting, these shifting, oneiric qualities only intensify.

Laryssa Kim’s debut EP Lov’em All was warmly and widely received, leading to performances across Belgium since its release in 2019. While an appearance on C12’s Social Distancing series in 2020 established her in club culture climes. Running in parallel with her solo project, her work within the group Oneironauts places her in constellation with a wider array of musicians. The group’s residency at Brussel’s Botanique culminates in the presentation of a new repertoire for Les Nuits de Botanique in 2021. All the while Laryssa remains active as a composer for dance and theatre,
with upcoming commissions for productions with KVS, Vooruit, Kaaitheater, deSingel, and Detheatermaker and as a member of contemporary and acousmatic music Europa Meta-Orchestra..

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