By Lauren McNee

Liquid Music artists in virtual residence Poliça and s t a r g a z e have certainly been keeping themselves busy in the past few months. The stars aligned back in Feb when Poliça was on tour in Berlin for their new album United Crushers, and the two met to make sounds together for the first time. s t a r g a z e musicians Maaike van der Linde and Marlies van Gangelen gave us an inside look into the collaboration with a diary-style narrative on the creative process.

Don't miss the virtual residency Work-In Progress Conversation at the Fitzgerald Theater on Sun, May 22!

Check out Channy Leaneagh's podcast interview on Liquid Music Playlist to hear about Poliça's thoughts on the collaboration

2016 Berlin

11 Feb
Poliça, Kantine am Berghain

On Thursday night we went to see Poliça performing at the Kantine am Berghain. They did a great job and we loved it! For most of us it was the first time seeing and hearing them play live. Whilst we were listening we got excited thinking of the possibilities and how to add s t a r g a z e sounds to their soundscapes. Channy has a beautiful voice and the band played very nicely attuned. It was a really nice surprise when bass player Chris started singing too. Almost all of the s t a r g a z e musicians play several instruments and like to alternate between playing and singing. Chris has a special voice and we will definitely ask him to sing with us! Maybe we can create backing vocals for Channy?

12 Feb
Workshop

On Friday we had breakfast with Poliça at André's place. It was nice to get to know the musicians better personally. After a cup of coffee we were ready to make some noise. Ryan prepared sound tracks, specifically for this Poliça/s t a r g a z e collaboration and we started to improvise along it. We played drones and invented minimal patterns. Our viola player Justin created a melody, accompanied with long notes by Maaike on bass flute and Marlies on cor anglais (English Horn). André played a groove on violin that connected nicely with one of Ryan's tracks. We had several go's at the improvisations and it really went into all directions from very romantic and lyrical to underground noise played on classical instruments. The great surprise is that we don't know what Poliça will use from the recordings, and how! Poliça liked our sounds and spontaneously applauded after our first improvisation. We are looking forward to the continuation of this project!

2016 Amsterdam

19 March

Today we recorded music for Poliça. We planned two sessions in Amsterdam in Maaike and Marlies' house, to create new material. We started off with listening to the 'song' track that Ryan sent us, and we started arranging the electronic piece on our instruments, it's really catchy. Besides this we also worked on finding new harmonies for the melody, for a new version and we made a start of a completely different B part. We also had some completely free improvisation which we recorded and listened back to in the next session. Marlies also used her Delta Harp for this, and Romain brought his electronic set-up. There was one part of an improvisation that we particularly liked and which we want to work out further. So this is what we'll do in the next session!