Event

Blackbird Presents: Mi and L'au, Josephine Foster, World

Mi and L'au met in Paris a few years back. Mi is Finnish and was working as a model to make ends meet and L'au (who's French) was working in the music industry (soundtracks, I think). They fell deeply and immediately in love, and after a short period of moving from apartment to apartment in Paris, they gave everything up and decided to move to the woods in Finland, so they could be alone together in peace and to spend their time discovering each other and their music. They live in a small cabin in complete isolation with the barest of essentials (except in the brutal Finnish winter, when they move to Helsinki) and they spend virtually all their time making music together in solitude. They are pure and gentle souls (Devendra's song, from oh me oh my "gentle soul" was written for L'au Ã¢â¬â the two had met in Paris when Devendra was wandering there, and L'au took him in, and they also made music together). Their music is bare and austere, made with simple instrumentation - voice, acoustic guitars, and other very sparse orchestrations. I wouldn't say it compares at all to the current crop of neo hippy "weird folk" etc. It has the naked quality of certain early Nico recordings, or Chet Baker...soulful and elegant, without being touchy-feely or confessional. Their music reminds me of how one might imagine a winter Finnish landscape - haunting and pure.