NOIA (aka Gisela Fulla-Silvestre) follows EPs from 2016 and 2019 with her first full-length album, gisela, out now via Cascine. She made the album while living between NYC and Barcelona, and it features her singing in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, and English. It also features a variety of different styles of music, ranging from Mediterranean folk music to thumping house-pop to reggaeton to experimental electronic manipulation, and she gets help from Buscabulla, Ela Minus, and Maria Arnal along the way. You can stream the LP below, and to give us an even better idea of what inspired it, Gisela has made us a list of some of the core influences behind the album. Some are specific artists/songs and others are more conceptual. Read on for what she had to say and to listen to some of her big inspirations...
Songwriting Challenges
My friends and I would meet on Zoom during the pandemic and we would set the timer for 12 hours in which we would have to write as many bad songs as possible.
Lessons with woulg
I took weekly music production lessons with this glitch electronic producer who would teach me new crazy techniques and he acted as a therapist to my songs as they were being developed.
Björk interviews
Spanish/Catalan/Mediterranean folk music
My kink is to listen to vocal music that has intricate melody ornaments.
Estrella Morente
Maria Arnal
Silvia Perez Cruz
Tarta Relena
Field Recordings
Costa Brava at midday (Mediterranean sea), winter new york traffic, friend dinners in Brooklyn, Menorca island at night, Whatsapp recordings
Prince - "I Would Die For You"
My Therapist
She helped me create systems and accountability that made me able to finish the stuff I would start. It all sounds very Pavlov behavioral therapy but I think it was in a way a pretty humanistic approach because it made me believe in my ability to make art.
Foley and ASMR sounds as beatmaking tools
Voice lessons with the amazing singer, Paula Domínguez