spellling

California-based artist Tia Cabral records haunting, genre-blurring experimental pop under the appropriately magical pseudonym Spellling. After her self-released 2017 debut, Pantheon of Me, received acclaim, she signed with Sacred Bones Records and released Mazy Fly in 2019. Cabral grew up in the suburbs of Sacramento before moving to Oakland in search of artistic freedom. She initially concentrated on making visual art, but following the death of a close friend, she was inspired to start making music in 2015, using looping pedals, synths, drums, and guitars to channel messages from her dreams. Music quickly became a passion for her, and she began performing around the Bay Area, often in unconventional venues such as a chapel and a former mortuary. She released her debut EP, Pantheon of Me, in early 2017. 

Her fluid blend of hypnotic folk, ethereal darkwave, and abstract soul earned attention from the local press, and her debut full-length, also titled Pantheon of Me, appeared later in the year. The album immediately received attention from websites like Pitchfork and Afropunk, and Bandcamp ranked it among their Top Five releases of the year. After signing with Sacred Bones, Spellling released the single "Hard to Please" in 2018, backed with a cover of Sparks' "My Other Voice." The following year, Sacred Bones released Spellling's sophomore record, Mazy Fly. The album featured "Hard to Please" as well as the single "Haunted Water."

"Pantheon Of Me"

SPELLLING

Buy album
"Blue (american dream)" video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEw-RpqPxuY

youtube preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfBk0QA_azs


Oakland. Freak Faith Folk. Let the spirit ride. Oakland’s Spellling (Chrystia Cabral) took the Bay Area scene by storm her first two years as a performing artist, with her demo version of "Pantheon Of Me"
"Blue (american dream)" video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEw-RpqPxuY

youtube preview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfBk0QA_azs


Oakland. Freak Faith Folk. Let the spirit ride. Oakland’s Spellling (Chrystia Cabral) took the Bay Area scene by storm her first two years as a performing artist, with her demo version of "Pantheon Of Me" charting at Bandcamp’s #7 album of 2017. “Pantheon Of Me” demo received glowing reviews from Pitchfork, Tiny Mix Tapes, KQED, and was named one of 2017's top new local artists by the East Bay Express. This November, Ratskin Records is proud to release “Pantheon Of Me” fully remastered for all formats, first on 12" LP, followed by cassette and digital versions. “Pantheon of Me” combines dark freak-folk, neo-soul, industrial, and pop sensibilities into forty-two minutes of haunting, elegant dark vocal forward futuristic electronic music. Cabral recently released a 7’’ single on Sacred Bones Records, but “Pantheon Of Me” is her first full-length album, and we couldn’t be happier to be releasing it with the world on LP/Cassette/Digital this December.

“Listening to it feels like searching through a pitch-black house for secret performances that slowly reveal their process. It’s nonlinear textures recall Geidi” Primes-era Grimes, with dashes of New Weird American mysticism and divine soul.....”
-Jenn Pelly, Pitchfork


"The songs on Pantheon of Me are fluid and nonlinear. They don’t oscillate between parts. They’re largely relieved of rhythmic underpinning. Instead they swell and billow outward, or else hover, wraithlike, in absorbing reveries. There’s gossamer guitar and streaks of stardust synth, beading keys and low-end murk. And sometimes the most stirring passages are spare save for one tone pulsing lighthouse-like in the distance. " - Sam Lefebvre, East Bay Express

follow her work and buy new recordings at:
www.spellling.bandcamp.com
Read more…
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  1. 1
    "Walk Up to Your House" 4:25
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  2. 2
    "Choke Cherry Horse" 4:03
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  3. 3
    "Phantom Farewell" 3:42
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  4. 4
    "Interior World" 3:18
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  5. 5
    "Live With Me" 3:17
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  6. 6
    "They Start The Dance" 3:03
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  7. 7
    "Nine Of Nights" 2:10
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  8. 8
    Bolt From The Blue 2:51
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  9. 9
    "Higher Ground" 2:54
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  10. 10
    "Blue (American Dream)" 3:55
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  11. 11
    "Place Without A Form" 2:59
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  12. 12
    "Black Wax" 2:19
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  13. 13
    "Lift Your Arms Around" 2:45
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“Listening to it feels like searching through a pitch-black house for secret performances that slowly reveal their process. It’s nonlinear textures recall Geidi Primes-era Grimes, with dashes of New Weird American mysticism and divine soul.....” - Jenn Pelly

— Pitchfork

“At the center of Pantheon of Me is Cabral’s elastic voice and incantatory phrasing. Take “Walk Up to Your House.” The opening lines unfold slow and thick: I dreamed a dream, again / This is the countdown. And the closing lyric, Late last night lyin’ in my bed eyes red, arrives at first as a choral backdrop, and then assumes the foreground of the mix with its pattering, sticky cadence. The songs on Pantheon of Me are fluid and nonlinear. They don’t oscillate between parts. They’re largely relieved of rhythmic underpinning. Instead they swell and billow outward, or else hover, wraithlike, in absorbing reveries. There’s gossamer guitar and streaks of stardust synth, beading keys and low-end murk. And sometimes the most stirring passages are spare save for one tone pulsing lighthouse-like in the distance.” - Sam Lefebre

— East Bay Express

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