Laurel Halo
Biography
Laurel Halo is composer, producer, musician and DJ, born in Detroit and currently based in Los Angeles. Drawing from a range of musical traditions, her output is diverse yet singular, with releases traversing ambient, leftfield club, experimental pop and film score.
Laurel's debut album Quarantine (2012) was released by pioneering London label Hyperdub; its combination of raw vocals and cold electronics garnered critical acclaim, including the #1 Album of the Year accolade by The Wire Magazine.
Two instrumental long players followed—Chance of Rain (2013) for Hyperdub and In Situ (2015) for Honest Jon’s—in conjunction with extensive touring. Both albums were developed from Laurel Halo’s live sets during those years—melodic dancefloor material made with a hardware setup.
In 2015 Halo was invited to collaborate with John Cale on a bespoke live performance which debuted at the Hamer Hall in Melbourne, Australia. Throughout that year Halo also composed the soundtrack for Still Be Here, a collaborative installation piece starring the Japanese virtual popstar, Hatsune Miku. Still Be Here debuted in 2016 at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, followed by appearances at the Barbican in London (2017) and the Miraikan Museum in Tokyo (2018).
Her fourth long player, Dust, was released in 2017 by Hyperdub, again to critical acclaim; it combined the hardware machine funk aesthetics of previous releases with loose, languid songwriting, and featured a number of collaborators (including Eli Keszler, Julia Holter, Lafawndah and Klein).
In 2018 Halo composed the score to the feature-length experimental documentary Possessed, directed by the Dutch design group Metahaven. She also released the mini-LP Raw Silk Uncut Wood on the Parisian label Latency that year; a collection of classically-inspired instrumentals, the album featured percussion by Eli Keszler, as well as cellist Oliver Coates. She also held a DJ residency on Rinse.FM that year, following on from a four year DJ residency on Berlin Community Radio (2014-2018). She also released a collaborative 12" with Hodge on Livity Sound, Tru / Opal / The Light Within You.
In 2019 Halo released her contribution to the landmark DJ-Kicks series, which was followed by an extensive DJ tour across Europe, North America and Asia. She also provided the soundtrack for Eckhaus Latta’s Fall 2019 collection, in addition to curating the second edition of the MODE Festival in London.
In 2020 Halo was an artist-in-residence at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. In addition she released the score to Possessed as a full-length album on London label Vinyl Factory, and a mix for Ignota Books / Camden Arts Centre inspired by Ursula Le Guin's seminal essay Carrier Bag of Fiction.
In 2021 Halo announced her new label Awe with a monthly show on NTS. She also joined the latest formation of Moritz von Oswald Trio, which released the LP Dissent on Modern Recordings/BMG in August 2021. The trio performed at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Berlin Atonal at Kraftwerk, and the Heidelberg Enjoy Jazz Festival. Further collaborations in 2021 included a debut performance with cellist Oliver Coates at Semibreve Festival, Braga, Portugal, and a debut performance with the London Contemporary Orchestra at the Southbank Centre, London.
In 2022 Laurel became a resident at Somerset House Studios in London. In addition, she scored Cecilie Bahnsen's debut runway show at Paris Fashion Week in March 2022. She was also commissioned by INA-GRM to compose a new multichannel piece for piano and electronics, premiering at the Présences électronique festival in Paris, April 2022. She also performed in duos with Oliver Coates and Anja Lauvdal, taught a composition workshop at CAMP in the French Pyrénées, August 2022, provided music for Trussardi at the opening of their new Palazzo in Milan, November 2022.
As of January 2023 Laurel joined the Faculty of Composition and Experimental Sound Practice at The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts in Valencia, California. In September 2023 she released her latest album, Atlas, as the debut release on her new recording label Awe. The album, described as "roadtrip music for the subconscious", is a series of sensual ambient jazz collages, and features instrumentalists such as Bendik Giske, Lucy Railton and Coby Sey.
