Artist : Aurora
Album : What Happened To The Heart ? (Deluxe)
Label : Decca (UMO)
Link : https://www.aurora-music.com/
Style : Electro Pop
With What Happened To The Heart? Aurora blends electronic influences with her pop and folk-inspired songs, creating a delicate setting for her pure, limpid voice.
Totally self-taught, Norwegian Aurora Aksnes discovered a keyboard in her family’s attic and explored its sounds when she was just six years old. She began writing her first songs when she was just nine, but it wasn’t until high school that her mother urged her to present her music to others. One of her friends recorded her during one of her first performances and posted it on the Internet. Thanks to this video, Aurora was spotted by labels and had several singles released from 2012 onwards, including “Runaway”, which met with some success on streaming platforms.
What Happened To The Heart? is Aurora’s fourth album, and here we present a slightly expanded version one year after its release. Her influences include Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Kate Bush and Björk. While her compositions are reminiscent of the folk of the first two artists, their electronic overlay brings them closer to modern pop. Some tracks feature simple layers of sound that accompany her crystalline, almost fragile voice. Others are more energetic, with a rhythm that asserts itself, a structure that becomes more complex and a more varied instrumentation that reinforces the record’s interest, and which we imagine will ignite crowds at festivals to come.
Like the vocals, everything is clear and every sound source is precisely positioned, whether it’s a dancing bass, drums, guitar or backing vocals. The record’s few ballads are charming little miniatures of sound with a soaring quality, and when the instruments multiply, the tracks become fuller and more impactful. Aurora takes advantage of this to push her voice forward, in a particularly delectable way, with certain passages almost taking on a club sound, for a record that banishes boredom and proudly advocates a hedonism full of life.redom and proudly advocates a hedonism full of life.