PARRA FOR CUVA
It’s an amusing paradox how Parra for Cuva’s new album Juno, containing recordings of the South American ronroco, an Indian flute player, and the hammered dulcimer, an ancient Persian instrument, was almost entirely produced within the four walls of the artist’s studio in Berlin. Back in 2019, the German musician found himself in a sort of pre-pandemic lockdown – his girlfriend was pregnant at the time and the couple’s activities were mostly confined to their home.
Still, Nicolas Demuth managed to fit the world into Juno – explorations with new instruments and languages, tracks named after African animals and exotic destinations. Interestingly, the album itself, Juno borrows its name from a child that lay safe inside a womb and hadn’t yet experienced the world at all. That’s the beauty of the 21st century though, one barely has to leave a room to travel far and wide. Parra for Cuva’s previous highly acclaimed album, Paspatou, titled after the butler of Jule Verne’s “Around The World In 80 Days”, already hinted at the musician’s worldly outlook. It also carved a unique position for Parra for Cuva as an artist, who brought a truly original sound to electronic music by mixing emotional dance floor experimentations with acoustic and ethnic soundscapes. Juno takes this global interaction further with the participation of seven musicians from around the world, many of whom Nicolas met online and worked with remotely.
For the artist, music-making isn’t about converging ideologies and world views, rather these multi- cultural collaborations were forged solely on the basis of a mutual love of music. In his studio,the diverse display of instruments – from bells to flutes to kalimbas and hang drums of all kinds – makes evident just how much Nicolas is an explorer of sound, “I don't believe in spirituality in music but there's definitely something when you take these traditional melodies and put them together with synths and beats – it takes you on a trip,” he says. Juno’s aptly named opener, Her Entrance, which features recordings of an Indian flute player Nicolas met somewhere in the desert of Rajasthan, feels indeed like an entryway into the world, in all its different colours, cultures and creeds.
