Julia, Julia 本名 Julia Kugel,有著 Dream Pop 質感的空靈鄉村、民謠,唱著抒情金曲般的咬耳旋律,第一次聽到這樣霧霧的仙女美感以為發現了個優秀新人,結果是 2010 年左右不能不知道的女子龐克樂團 The Coathangers 的成員。
The Coathangers 像是颱風進行中的狀態,相當直接了當的掃過,而 Julia 的個人作品就是颱風過後的陰天,突然發現很適合自省,私密的低聲絮語,想說的事情未必是快樂的,但卻多少能得以撫慰。
This is the crucial question at the core of Julia, Julia, the moniker for Julia Kugel, founding member of garage punk icons The Coathangers and the dream pop duo Soft Palms. On her first solo full-length album Derealization, Kugel shifts her focus from collaboration and band dynamics towards a singular artistic vision and private self-discovery. Steeped in the beguiling pop elements of her past work, Derealization is a meditative deep dive into the mind of a person struggling to understand a crumbling internal and external world. The album traverses a landscape of ethereal folk, atmospheric deconstructed pop, and dubbed-out country ballads, all centered around straight forward and direct lyrics. This juxtaposition of nebulousness and lucidity gives the album a sense of clarity emerging from the haze, an apt reflection of Kugel personal growth and journey toward self-acceptance.
Derealization is based on weaving the unreal, unsaid, and unknown into an undulating sonic fabric. Vocal layering and abstract instrumentation convey a blurred desperation to connect to an emotional and psychological focal point. Moody, dark, and sumptuous, the record is a flow chart of Julia Kugel coming into herself as an artist and songwriter. The album finds Julia playing almost all the instruments and taking her first stab at engineering at COMA, her and her husband home recording studio in Long Beach, CA.