LP – Limited Edition ‘Leaf Green’ Vinyl (2025 Repress).

A travelogue that unites physical and inner space, a series of trance states rendered in vivid colour, a delirious portal into the ether.Marlene Ribeiros debut for Rocket Recordings and first albumunder her own name is all of this and much more. Toquei No Sol isa fresh new chapter for this unique artist, by far the most melodic
and transcendent outing yet for her hypnotic dreampop.

This is only the latest release in a long history of sonic experimentation for Marlene, which includes her previous work as Negra Branca across a series of releases on labels such as Tesla Tapes and Zamzam and a long period as a member of audial iconoclasts and Rocket mainstays GNOD, not to mention collaborations with the like of Valentina Magaletti and Thurston Moore.

Toquei No Sol is also a record with a very distinctive and potent sense of place, paradoxically despite having been woven together from recordings made in Ireland, Wales, Portugal, Madeira and Salford.Its genesis came via a visit to Marlenes maternal grandmother Emilia, whose influence as well as the sounds of her kitchen in Portugal.can be heard on the albums first track Quatra Palavras.

Emilia ended up getting excited about me being able to record things there and then and – total news to me – told me she used to sing a lot when she was younger to the point of getting offered studio time but refusing it as she was fearful of what that could imply in those times relates Marlene From that point I planned to include her in this record as sort of the chance she never had of getting her voice out there.

Elsewhere, a disarmingly catchy and irresistible grace is married toa utilitarian approach to sound and texture. The ritualistic Sangue De Lua de Lobo (first released on a Sofia records compilation Songs Of The Lunar Eclipse) contains random objects from Marlenes then-garden in Ireland, whereas on the drifting, beatific Forever the percussion tracks are constructed from the sounds of pots and pans in her own Salford kitchen.

Yet at all times her fleet-footed approach to melody rings through even as the tracks conjure visions of heat-hazes, meditative spaces and late-night epiphanies. Although listeners may hear echoes of theloop-driven psychedelia of Panda Bears Person Pitch or the incantatory ululations of Pocahaunted in these beguiling soundscapes and magick-strewn mantras, the truth is that the aesthetic here isvery much Marlenes alone.

Its all a big misty haze of nostalgia, playfulness, self-reflection and hopefulness is what Marlene reckons herself. Yet Toquei No Solis also a transporting vision from an artist both returning to her rootsand looking out to new celestial horizons.

Tracklist:

A1. Quatro Palavras [07:44]
A2. Sangue de lua de lobo [04:20]
A3. Toquei no Sol [05:42]

B1. You Do It [07:21]
B2. Forever [06:13]
B3. What It Is [07:23]