The one thing Ina Cube shares with Iggy Pop is their hometown of Ann Arbor. Yet, Laurel Halo serves as her pseudonym, essentially a reinvention and tap into her fascination of both the video game (tip of the hat to you Halo 1, 2, 3, and eventually 4 lovers) and the infinite.
Running in the same sonic circle as Oneohtrix Point Never, Autre Ne Veut, and Balam Acab, her tracks range from avant-garde to 90s R&B. In an interview with FACT magazine, she points out her draw to “imagining the shapes of basic music idioms – domes, arcs, webs…”
Her King Felix EP release is “spacey, but never grandiose enough to be space-pop; it’s kaleidoscopic without being psyche; it’s hazy, but with the sort of strong hooks and clinical arrangements you don’t often associate with the chillwave or drag set.” In her latest release, Quarantine, Halo stems away from the dance-techno aspects of the EP and focuses on voice, in part influenced by searching for Whitney Houston “knockoff” covers during her dayjob, realizing how “honest” Houston’s voice is. After all, it is better to be honest and imperfect, than manipulated.
“I was thinking about going to a therapist,” she says during a Fader interview. “But instead, I just made Quarantine.”
Laurel Halo’s music will put you into space, a constant imagery beyond the mind’s consciousness; or perhaps something in the form of Wayne Coyne’s spaceball, it is all a dream. She’ll be at Granada Theater on July 28th at Gorilla vs. Bear II alongside A.Dd+, Taken By Trees, Twin Sister, Chromatics, and Glass Candy. We’ll be in our own space video game that night, figuratively. See you there.