Liesa Van der Aa

‘Like a snail on a razor blade.’ That’s how a friend of Liesa Van der Aa described her new album Caramel — as softness that wraps itself around sharp edges, but never lets itself be cut. An apt image, because Caramel is Liesa’s most personal work to date.

The “younger, softer sister” of Liesa Van der Aa, her previous album Easy Alice still moves in the same jazzy universe. Although, to name a few references: you hear echoes of Laurie Anderson, this time intertwined with the early classics of James Blake and fragments of Billie Eilish and FKA Twigs. Electronics, contemporary classical, baroque, jazz and hip hop — Caramel wears all these coats at once, as Van der Aa herself likes to describe it, casually layered on top of each other. And on top of that, more than ever before, the masks fall away. ‘I wanted to make a record that feels like you're hearing someone think out loud,’ she says. ‘As if you're sitting on the edge of someone's consciousness, without everything being spoken out loud yet.’

The first seeds of Caramel were born during corona. While the world came to a stop, Liesa and Niels Broos returned to the studio. They improvised on old demos and explored new melodies — together, but often also from a distance. Yet it was only later on, by the wood-burning stove in her parents' house in Grimbergen, that those fragments formed into something new. For there, surrounded by forests and breathing space, a different kind of listening emerged. A form of editing that became almost surgical. ‘Not a single song remained as it was,’ says Liesa. ‘It became an eerily controlled process.’

This is how melodies that return again and again grew. Liesa calls them miniatures — small, enigmatic songs that cannot be pinned down, but linger in the mind. Liesa cut, pasted, played with loops as in hip hop, and so built a universe of sound that navigates between jazz and pop, between melancholy and contemporary freshness. The production was done in close collaboration with Niels Broos, with contributions from actress Sandra Hüller and singer Judith Okon, among others. Influences? From Nina Simone to Laurie Anderson, from Billie Eilish to James Blake — but above all: Liesa's own uncompromising signature.