c u c i n a
p o v e r a

live

about

Hilja, 2018

Zoom, 2019

Tyyni, 2020

calendar

photos

Plafond 6, 2020

The Oystercatcher, 2020

Lumme, 2021

Seesteyttää, 2021

Cucina povera is solo project of finnish luxembourgish artist Maria U Rossi
Named after an Italian culinary concept, my project looks at elements that are everyday and accessible

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This is an archive for show related material, reviews, release ephemera, videos and poems that became my songs
Here you may readily find out about my process and ways to collaborate

releases

Hilja, 2018

An ethereal, unresolved presence fading into the stereo field, Hilja breathes into life with a haunted synth line and self-sampling vocal hook that instantly creates an enchanted space. Hilja is the debut album by Cucina Povera. Named after a style of southern Italian traditional cooking associated with precarity and making-do, a philosophy of simplicity and stoicism that applies perfectly to the spare but beautiful music Rossi experiments with. Hilja’s marriage of minimal synth, field recordings and the hymnal dexterity of Rossi’s vocal performances creates a new language, sometimes literally, to be spoken in some mythological Fourth World we’ve yet to create.

Originally from Finland, Rossi brings an acute sense of space, surroundings, and practicality to her working practice, with each composition often relying on a limited sound palette to create deeply affecting messages which transcend language. Cucina Povera’s power is to communicate purely, often down to the solo-choir nature of Rossi’s multi-layered voice, an achingly beautiful instrument which has seems to have an innate spirituality in its grain. The tension between the means and the end is at the heart of Cucina Povera, the invocation of a kind of secular spirituality at times using nothing but Rossi’s voice. Indeed there’s almost a Dogme-like purity to the arrangements: Elektra is a soothing song based around the lapping waves of Rossi’s wordless backing vocals and a simple field recording of stones knocked together. Kehoitus is completely a cappella, a haunted fairytale told in glossolalia, evoking a quasi-religious experience with very little.

For music often minimal and simple there’s a boldness that belies Hilja’s status as a debut. Rossi allows each word, each sound and rhythm to exist in its own space, finding its own relationship with its surroundings. Mesikämmenen Veisu is perhaps the most ecclesiastical sounding composition here; burbling water trickles below a virtuoso vocal, with incredible arrangements in several registers undulating above. A meditation to relieve hunger and restriction, it’s a perfect summing up of Hilja, a music ambient but completely earthed, finding enchantment in what you have to hand, the realism of magic, the magic of realism.

Zoom, 2019

Zoom is a verité collection of situational recordings made by Cucina Povera - in intimate spaces full of acoustic or ideological intrigue, primarily using a capella voice. It is a document of different locations and moods that interested the recorder, a postcard look into the stream-of-consciousness processes of an artist developing her own language. Using little else other than a Tascam Zoom recorder and loop pedal these are highly personal recordings originally intended as notes for future compositions that ended up becoming the purest rendition of this first phase of Cucina Povera's music to date.

Originally presented as WAV files named simply ZOOM---, these on-the-fly compositions are a perfect distillation of Rossi's practice. With no augmentation, not even a song-title, these bare, beautiful tracks become a materialist document of the wonder of the every-day. While Rossi's previous album, Hilja, was a sculpted whole that at times used post-production techniques and electronic instruments, Zoom presents acoustic sound as a source of joy and discovery largely without artifice. Rossi's voice is used a searchlight, shining into the crevices of a room's dark corners, or as on ZOOM0005, projected into a glass bottle aperture, for an almost Shakuhachi texture. Voice dissapates into texture, with rhythms created by simple hissing sounds and the i nterweaving of loops. ZOOM0001 interlocks 4 different a capella melodies to create a chorus, an improvised solo hymn that seems to rise and rise. ZOOM0010 uses staccato vocal bursts, like Meredith Monk huffing out Steve Reich rhythms, while the soloing Rossi expertly ducks in and out of the frame. Like the most celestial moments of her debut Hilja it is a religious experience but rendered more powerful in its naked, secular form.

Indeed, there are shades of Hilja in the sounds, with some strains resurfacing from that album, insinuating that Rossi's practise is a continuing form, a series of sentences in the artists' personal language that mutate over time, bending into new shapes. On Zoom, Rossi’s minimalism is fully stark, a process fully transparent and all the more celestially powerful because of it.

Tyyni, 2020

Plafond 6, 2020

Plafond enters its second decade with Cucina Povera and Haron fusing the folkloric and futurist. Maria Rossi and Haron Aumaj (real names) honour musical cinematism on ‘Riffittelyä’, which slowly unfolds during a twenty-two minute trail of exploration, angst and redemption. Meddling voices pinch through an aural mist, Kubrickesque strings impend and cathedral organs relevate. Most striking is the compatibility of Rossi’s tangibility and Aumaj’s computerisation, seamlessly forming a renewed dynamic, as granular as it is loose in texture.

During this unique first collaboration it can be quickly forgotten both artists have highly distinctive styles. We are reminded of these singularities on the other half of the record, featuring two solo works, both rich yet contrasting in their colour and emotion. On ‘Maandag, Spiegeldag’, Aumaj sketches in orange chromatics, a featherweight composition that feels far away from the greyscale fragility that Rossi portrays on ‘Ajatus’. Showcasing two minimalist artists catapulted by their stunning debut albums, this sixth Plafond keeps the listener in constant awe, pointing us to the endless potential of spontaneity.

Comes in Pantone printed outer sleeve with deep red and yellow topped with a silk screened black and a soft pink inner sleeve, wrapped in a dreamy blue Obi-strip printed with white and black, by the BAKK Fuzz Factory.

The Oystercatcher, 2020

The Oystercatcher is a collaborative LP from Cucina Povera and ELS. Recorded in London over two days, hours’ worth of improvisations have been edited down to form these six tracks. A fragile interplay is at work between Maria’s drifting vocals and the ominous churn of Edward’s modular synth. Each sonic element takes a turn at leading the way.

The opening track ‘Mantle’ is formed from sparse, monolithic electronics, woven gently with a thread of vocals. In the closing track ‘Eon’ Maria’s voice shepherds spontaneous bursts of sounds, almost Rave-like if order were imposed, through 15 minutes of turmoil and resplendent until the end. Maria’s vocals make their own trails amongst the noise, bringing to mind the the exploratory language from Ursula K. Le Guin’s album ‘Music and Poetry from the Kesh’, recalling the same understated mystery. The overall effect of this collaboration is a completely unique creation albeit within a recognisable lineage of predecessors. The artwork reflects the vision of these two artists, collaged together. Both images are from a trip to Helsinki. Edward’s photograph of Tulips caught after dark are reviled by a flash. Maria’s seemingly abstract drawing is a graphite rubbing taken from a granite slab of a pavement somewhere in Kallio. Together the two images represent two different methods for capturing a city’s haptic landscape.

The album moves with a feeling of transience, which is no surprise given that the idea to collaborate was formed in Helsinki, realised in London and edited together in Rotterdam. The Oystercatcher tells a fragile tale, one that spins out into the unknown. A cold union of voice and machine, still tentative and probing, learning to co-exist. A kind of fundamental shift whereby shared moments have been turned to sound. The Oystercatcher is a bird that can freely travel between the earth, sea and sky. The motif is taken from a Tove Jansson short story. A dead bird washes ashore, two different versions of events are presented to how the bird came to die. The album feels like two different stories being presented on top of one another but ultimately coming to the same tragic conclusion.

Lumme, 2021

Lumme is the fourth studio album by Cucina Povera. Recorded in Rotterdam, London, Luxembourg, and Glasgow, Lumme explores an eclectic range of styles over the course of its 60-minute runtime. Opening track “Sinisen ruusun tapaus,” a 20-minute improvised piece, stands as one of Rossi’s most accomplished works to date, combining transcendent organ drones with angelic, reverse delay -tweaked vocals. Indeed, Rossi’s voice is Lumme’s driving force; her vocal performances on hymns such as “EKR” are technically stunning and emotionally powerful. The entire album is the work of a distinctively brilliant artist, one who takes ambient and choral music to interstellar heights.

Tyyni is the third album by Cucina Povera and their second album recorded using a more studio-based scenario – as opposed to last year’s Zoom, a collection of in-situ, spontaneous recordings – Tyyni feels like a slowly unfurling mediation on the clash between nature and mechanical living, a rumination on the complexities of modern life that begin to unveil more about the inner landscape of the artist as it progresses. A Finnish word referring to still, serene weather, the title belies a new note of turmoil in Cucina Povera’s soundworld. Tyyni represents a more detailed focus on the sculpting of sounds that curl around Rossi’s hymnal vocal performances. It’s a more adventurous work than Rossi’s previous output that goes further into noise elements and vocal abstraction while maintaining the balance and ecclesiastical ecstasy of her debut Hilja.

While tension at the core of Cucina Povera is always prevalent, previously it was organic sounds that were used to counterpoint Rossi’s singing but on Tyyni these are often replaced with aggressive synths and distortion, profane clashes with the seemingly sacred hymns. Whether close mic’d and intoning in a loop or in full flight, Maria Rossi’s voice remains in the foreground, set here against a more synthetic backdrop. This development builds new worlds for Cucina Povera, a digital environment which brings in a sense of the alien for Rossi’s vocal to duel. The effect is often dazzling. On Salvia Salvatrix, an ode to the medicinal plant used to ward off evil spirits, Rossi’s invocation is encircled by a distorted synth sound tearing at the fabric of the composition. It’s an inspired juxtaposition, leaving the listener to appreciate both sounds as separate and as a duet. Anarkian kuvajainen embraces a sense of chaos, an accidental transmitting mobile phone’s pulse is swept up gently with looped synth swells as Rossi’s prayer-like vocal rhythmically teases the composition into loops that embrace and then drift apart. Teerenpeli flirts with a minimal beat rendered by sampler and processed, layered field recordings of capercaillies, while Side A ends with one of Rossi’s most beautiful, simple tracks yet recorded. Varjokuvatanssi is an a cappela recording built on top of a wordless glossolalia, a shadowy interplay which foregrounds the solo vocal. Pölytön nurkka is the most melodic song yet recorded by Cucina Povera. While it still maintains an off-the-cuff performance style, the synthesized chimes and 4/4 beat are smothered by a distorted synthesizer which almost replicates the bravado of an electric guitar feedbacking into the night. Rossi’s subject matter talks of trying to start anew, getting rid of extraneous material, perhaps still feeling powerless to affect positive change. On Haaksirikkoutunut, the protagonist vocal is lost, a vessel rudderless on the ocean, buffeted by waves metaphorical or real, digital, atonal chords gurgling and splashing against the bow, a storm forever brewing on the horizon. Saniaiset recalls Coil in its eldritch, nocturnal tone and digital-bell like synth, Rossi’s half-spoken/half-sung voice attaining a creepy tone before flipping into flight. Album closer Jolkottelureitti uses an escalating, sequenced synth that splinters into both abrasive tones and harmonising chords creating a kosmische effect, reminding the listener of Kluster or synth-era Popol Vuh, all the while elevated by Rossi’s searching vocalising.

For an artist with such a singularly unique musical language, Cucina Povera is continually teasing new strands and emotive tones from an evolving palette. Most importantly, Tyyni appears to be pulling back the veil to uncover an artist finding a synergy between her own emotional inner world and practice. As such, on her third album, Maria Rossi has found a third way between abstraction and extraneous emotion, personal experience turned inside out to reveal more about the listener.

"The piece ‘Sinisen Ruusun Tapaus’ is arguably very representative of her approach to music, relying on the bare essentials needed to convey her emotionally rich sonic statements. This time round she employed a Hammond organ serving as a subtle but powerful melancholic backdrop, giving center stage to her haunting voice, abstracted through the use of effects. This melancholy is accentuated further when presented alongside the documentation of one of Cucina Povera's rainy London commutes during late winter in 2019." (West den Haag)

Sinisen Ruusun Tapaus video for West den Haag: "No View, The Radio" project

Seesteyttää, 2021

live

24 JUN 2021 Oxi Garten, Berlin, Germany w Vladimir Ivkovic
19 JUN 2021 Intonal Festival, Malmö, Sweden w Civilistjävel!
5 NOV 2020 Poesía en voz alta, Casa del Lago, Mexico City (online)
27 OCT 2020 Worm, Rotterdam
2 OCT 2020 Re:wire Festival, Korzo, Den Haag, Netherlands
5 SEP 2020 Palanga, Samogitia, Lithuania
6 FEB 2020 ICA, London with Helm & Graham Lambkin
16 NOV 2019 Maison Salvan, Labège, France (headline)
12 NOV 2019 Electrowerkz w Carla Dal Forno
14 OCT 2019 The Flying Duck w Sugai Ken
11 OCT 2019 Cologne, Germany w Puce Mary
21 SEP 2019 LOM, Bratislava, Slovakia w Lucie Vitkova
7 SEP 2019 Old Hairdresser's, Glasgow w Rhys Chatham
6 SEP 2019 SAY Awards w Lylo
23 AUG 2019 Jupiter Rising, Jupiter Artland
10 AUG 2019 Belfast, EastSide Arts / The 343 w Katie Shannon
4 AUG 2019 Supernormal, Braziers Park, Oxfordshire
27 JUL 2019 Klosterruine, Berlin w Bendik Giske
20 JUL 2019 The Yard Theatre, London
18 JUL 2019 New River Studios, London w Maria Somerville
29 JUN 2019 The Cube Cinema, Bristol
27 JUN 2019 The Victoria, London
22 JUN 2019 Civic House, Glasgow
18 JUN 2019 June Records, Toronto, ON
14 JUN 2019 La Sala Rossa, Suoni Per Il Popolo, Montréal, PQ
31/5/19 All Nations Church, Halifax, NS
18-19/5/19 Cafe OTO w Russell Haswell
17/5/19 5 Miles, London
4/5/19 Worth it, Scotland
12/4/19 Ormside projects, London w Lolina
9/4/19 NTS Radio, London
6/4/19 Ancienne Belgique, Brussels
16/3/19 Cafe OTO, London w/ Ilta Hamara, Xvarr, Malvern Brume
17/2/19 cafe OTO LONDON w STILL HOUSE PLANTS & friends
18/1/19 BBC Radio 6 Music // Tom Ravenscroft
13/12/18 CCA Glasgow The Last Song
10/12/2018 Glasgow Improvisers' Orchestra
7/12/2018 Stereo duo set w qwuxy
30/11/2018 Old Hairdresser's duo set w Dave Clark
26/11/2018 Platform w Barbara Morgenstern
10/11/2018 ALICE COPENHAGEN w Astrid Sonne
3/11/18 A cut above, The flying duck
25/10/2018 The Courtyard theatre, London w Eartheater
6/10/2018 New River Studios, London w Best Available Technology
22/9/2018 The 78 GLASGOW
21/9/2018 Rum shack GLASGOW
20/9/2018 Old Hairdressers GLASGOW w Ben Vince
31/8/2018 DDD Records PARIS
28/8/2018 Old dentist LONDON
25/8/2018 Glove that fits LONDON
31/7/2018 Commend / RVNG intl NEW YORK
27/7/2018 Milagrosa BROOKLYN
27/7/2018 The Lot radio BROOKLYN
25/7/2018 La Rama MONTREAL
21/7/2018 Cyberia MONTREAL
21/7/2018 Invisible city TORONTO
10/6/2018 NTS radio LONDON
9/6/2018 Cafe oto LONDON w Jac Berrocal
7/6/2018 Brunswick club BRISTOL
11/5/2018 Queens hall EDINBURGH
6/5/2018 Sounds from the other city SALFORD
21/5/2018 Pipe factory GLASGOW International
5/4/2018 Counterflows festival @ Fred Paton w WIDT
27/3/2018 Glad cafe w Alasdair Roberts
15/3/2018 Communal leisure w Quinie
3/2/2018 3rd Ear @ KPC Glasgow
15/11/2017 RADIOPHRENIA @ CCA Glasgow
8/11/2017 Rum Shack with Sapphire Slows & Lo Kindre
6/9/2917 Stereo w Nite Jewel
1/8/2017 CCA w Kara Lis Coverdale
23/7/2017 Cafe OTO w Still House Plants
17/6/2017 The Old Hairdressers w Bamboo
17/5/2017 Glad Cafe w Matana Roberts
30/4/2017 Flying Duck
29/4/2017 Rum Shack
26/4/2017 Flying Duck
30/3/2017 Nice n Sleazy's
31/1/2017 Drouth @ Art School
3/12/2016 Stereo w Islam Chipsy
16/10/2016 Flying Duck w Oliver Coates
25/9/2016 Old Hairdresser's w YEAH YOU
August 2016 Flat gig for oh141

Calendar

past shows

16 JUL 2021 FKV, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
31 JUL 2021 Leipzig, Germany (online)
?? AUG 2021 Vilnius, Lithuania
4 SEP 2021 Rotterdam, Netherlands
1 OCT Het Bos, Antwerp, Belgium
5 OCT 2021 Budapest, Hungary

Boomkat Review:
Maria Rossi graces Vladimir Ivkovic’s Offen Music with a special new round of plasmic vocal incantations. This stuff works like a book of spells, we tell you.

Descending from her cloud base somewhere above Glasgow, Rossi presents her most succinct suite of tunes in ‘Seesteyttää’ after a handful of progressively tight and impressive releases with Night School and Primordial Void since 2019. Her sound is now so familiar it feels like she’s been around much longer, channelling to our minds the layered vulnerability of Grouper and the arcane wonder of the Cocteaus, but with a contemporary concision that loosely places her in precious zones also shared by Teresa Winter and Orphan Fairytale.

The four songs here are dense but deeply enchanting, eliding inspirations from Finnish folk via rippling rhythmelodic synths and percussion, and subtlest vocal processing, to sound something like devotional music for an ambient love cult. Somewhere between the plaintive sway of ‘Walthamstow Suokellot,’ the chiming bliss pop of ‘Rushmoren Sipulihoyryt Saniaiset,’ and the ice cave ambience of ‘Selkeammat Vedet’ and ‘Taivaankappaleet.’ we ascended to a higher plane...

about

b. 1991 Helsinki, lives and works in Glasgow & Luxembourg

Residency

Subcity Radio 'Between the Acts' 2015 – 2016
WORM, Rotterdam, November 2020
Clyde Built Radio 'Cucina Povera' 2020 – 2021

Selected Commissions

Rework of Alasdair Roberts, 'Long-a-growing'
Remix of Wraetlic, 'Rapture Logic'
Radiophrenia 2017 – 'Intuitive Architecture : I and O as compositional basis'
Radiophrenia 2019 – 'The Spectrolite Pool'
Radiophrenia 2020 – 'The Healer'
West Den Haag, Thuistezien 2021 – 'Sinisen Ruusun Tapaus'
Nottingham Contemporary, 2021 – 'EKR'

Publications

Film Composition

Faultline by Lisa Fannen, 2020
Interior Realms eds. Andrea Cetrulo and Marta Michalowska, 2021

'Elektra' for S.w.S. by Filip Velkovski
'Kuparirumpu' for Lagon by Andrés Barón
Original Score for Beyond Taxonomic Narratives by Natalia Sliwinska, 2021

Formal education

MA (Hons) University of Glasgow, 2013
MSci Edinburgh College of Art, 2014
MLitt University of Glasgow, 2016
PhD Candidate, University of Glasgow, 2017–present

nathan (at) 33-33 (dot) co (bookings)
maria (dot) u (dot) rossi (at) gmail (dot) com


DEMOS – https://soundcloud.com/cucinapovera
RELEASES – https://cucinapovera.bandcamp.com/
MIXES – https://www.mixcloud.com/cucinapovera/playlists/radio-mixes/
https://soundcloud.com/cucinapovera/sets/mixes

Contact

Selected Radio + Mixes

Structures from Silence, 2018
NTS Radio, 20218 + 2019
Noods Radio, 2019
Cultivated Sound, 2019
Emulsion Magazine, 2020
Bleep Mix, 2020
Ransom Note, The Monday is OK Mix : 'Mosquito's Daydream', 2020
Wake Up Lullaby for Nunzio Borino, Mondonero, 2020
Choses Contraires for Elen Huynh, 2021
If-Only Mix, 2021

Somewhere in a layby near London 2018 by Calum Macleod

Listen

(selected) press

Counterflows 2018 performance with Roos Dijkhuizen

Counterflows 2018 by David Laskowski

Cologne 2019 by Arne Schramm

Belfast 2018

Glasgow 2019 by Theatrum Mundi

past

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