Carla dal Forno

Carla dal Forno is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist with a distinct sound that places her ethereal voice and ambient tendencies against a fairly bare bass, which has a nice grounding effect. She plays the pulse or a stripped down riff in a way that not only adds a hypnotic tone but also opens up a lot of room at the higher end for her to lean into the dreaminess. What she fills that space with is smart, fascinating melodic pieces that are roughly in the same area code as Cate Le Bon. The result might come across as a mixture of nerdy post-punk and classic Stereolab cool. The work she did with her previous band, F ingers, as well as her earlier solo work had more overtly slow burning ambient pieces with similar experimental production elements. Her album Top of the Pops (2018), is a covers album.