The imagery accompanying Calla’s new album Patterns of Remedy casts the musician as sprite.
We’re not in Tinker Bell territory though, this fairy is subject to gravity. All the same, the vibe is distinctly ethereal.
That’s the music too, Calla’s cultured soprano stepping lightly at first, spinning delicate melodies that build to dense forests of sound. It makes her upcoming live gig an intriguing prospect.
Intriguing is what Calla does.
Reporting on an event at St Paul’s Cathedral in 2021, Weekend Mix music writer Fraser Thompson recorded that she "held an inscribed copper bowl, which rang out as she drew a wooden object around its inner edges, its tone forming a base for her own rich, soaring vocals".
Reviewing her last album, My Body of Water, that same year, he wrote it was "sonically intense, but not intense like a hedge trimmer, more intense like the midday bells of a cathedral".
The intensity remains for Patterns of Remedy, but more explicitly at the service of ethereal this time — an aesthetic she’s happy to own.
"Because it has been such a consistent feedback, and I think I have brought it more to the forefront with this album, in terms of it being a conscious thing," she says.
That process has involved further establishing her identity as a musician.
"I have sort of laid out the landscape — which is obviously subject to change and evolution — but I feel I have a clear sense of what kind of music I am making and what my intention is with this."
As ethereal suggests, Calla is reaching for something beyond the everyday.
"It is very spiritual for me. Tapping into something that is bigger than us and connecting us," she says, ahead of a self-deprecating chuckle.
"Like, getting out of the rational mind and connecting into something greater, on the emotional and spiritual level."
Importantly, Calla has the tools to pull this off — alongside her now well gig-tested track record in electronic music, she’s also a classically trained musician and opera singer who last year won the Christchurch Dame Malvina Major Foundation South Island Arts Excellence Award.
However, she herself still finds it difficult to describe the music that accommodates all these various influences.
"It does feel like it is novel territory. I do feel like I am bringing worlds together, that epic world of orchestral and operatic, alongside the depth and grit of electronic music. Yeah, so, the most consistent feedback I get is that it is very cinematic and ethereal."
But the music is grounded too, the songwriter making an effort to deliver some terrestrial meaning.
"I still want people to connect with what I am talking about or their own interpretation of what that means to them — so it is accessible, without giving everything away too obviously."
Among the very real world subjects she tackles on the new album is our pre-apocalypse moment, in the wailing Hour Of Gold.
That’s where we are right now, she says.
"I do see that as part of the role of music, and what I see as my role, to connect people to themselves and to each other and to this planet. If we are operating from that emotional heart-space, we are more likely to actually look after what needs to be looked after."
The sophistication and technical skills on display in Patterns of Remedy are no fluke.
Calla, aka Calla Knudson-Hollebon, completed much of the work on the album last year at the University of Otago for her honours in production music performance.
"So, I tried to write a lot of the songs before I came into the university year, so I was approaching it from a production standpoint."
It was quite a different process for her, as she usually writes as she goes. It definitely changed the music on the album, she says.
"For me, there is maybe more flow. There has definitely been a development in my songwriting, which is what I am really excited about, and also I have done more collaboration."
That was a central intention of the album, bringing in other musicians for some of the tracks, and resulted in a significant shift for the songs.
"A couple of them have a live drummer and I have previously only used electronic drums, so that has a totally different feel to it, which has been really fun."
Dunedin’s the only date on Calla’s two-month tour to support the album that gets the full band — elsewhere she’ll be playing solo.
So those who make their way to Dive can expect the full sound journey, the fully immersive sound experience, she says.
"It is not music that you have a beer over and yarn to your mate and you have to shout because the music is too loud in the background. It is something that draws people and keeps them and it is a shared experience, you know."
The gig
Calla & the Lillies, Dive, Friday June 9, 8.30pm
Patterns of Remedy is also out on June 9, on digital platforms.
