Galina Juritz - One Weird Trick (Kit Records)

British South African composer and producer Galina Juritz presents 'One Weird Trick' her debut solo album, on London's home for interdisciplinary oddballs, Kit Records. As a classically trained violinist, Galina has worked in bands and ensembles such as The ShhArt Ensemble, Inclementine, and in various combinations featuring leading musicians from Cape Town and Johannesburg's celebrated classical and jazz scenes.

Galina composed the music for ‘Madness: Songs of Hope and Despair’, a cantata made in collaboration with Dizu Plaatjies, with a libretto by psychiatrist Dr Sean Baumann. ‘Madness’ debuted at the World Psychiatry International Congress in 2016, and had a two week run at Cape Town's Baxter Theatre in 2017. As a composer, Juritz frequently writes for film, animation and ensemble.

Galina has collaborated with the likes of Neo Muyanga, Mr Beatnick, Cara Stacey, Juliana Venter, Violeta Garcia, Kit Records head Richard Greenan and more. She has been remixed by artists including Photay, Memotone and Tom Skinner (Sons of Kemet, The Smile). 'One Weird Trick' is the culmination of Galina's solo material. Still rooted in the ornate, technical world of string composition and arrangement, the album is stubbornly unclassifiable.

Opening with time-dilated ambient ‘Leaves’ before segueing into rippling, florid techno ‘Skeleton and Tiger’, Galina twists again and again, shifting gears through stoned, jazz-inflected r'n'b, string-led widescreen songcraft and orchestral minimalism for standing on vast shorelines.

On the B side, Galina flexes her composition chops with the storming jazz of ‘Spirit Level’, recorded by Cape Town-based musicians Buddy Wells, Andrew Lilley, Jonno Sweetman and Stephen de Souza. Galina is then joined by The Stockholm Sax Quartet on ‘In Rebellion of Time’, a stately Reichian revelation that moves from solemn ballet to ecstatic multiharmonic denouement.

To close, Galina retrieves oozing electronics and smeared journal entries from the guts of a black hole - a fitting conclusion to a truly unique, unpredictable, delightful, sad, infectious, and bizarre record.