Foundling + Marlene Ribeiro

ADRA promotions and Puzzle Hall Inn present…

Foundling (Canda / Berlin)
Ambient psychedelic experimental-pop from sound artist, composer and harpist Erin Lang.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hk4hR-LVdhs

Marlene Ribeiro
Hypnotic psychedelic dream-pop made of looping acoustic instruments and electronics on Rocket Recordings
https://marleneribeiro.bandcamp.com/album/toquei-no-sol

at Puzzle Hall Inn, 21 Hollins Mill Lane, Sowerby Bridge, HX6 2RF
4pm – 6pm.

FREE ENTRY with donations for acts gratefully accepted

Foundling is the evolving musical project of Canadian-born, Berlin-based composer, vocalist , and harpist Erin Lang, whose work explores the space between composition, improvisation, and deep listening. Known for emotionally subtle songwriting and expansive sound design, Foundling’s music moves fluidly between experimental pop and ambient forms.

The Guardian UK: “-their album Equilibria is an intriguing mix of dream pop, junkyard minimalism and glittery ECM jazz, pitched somewhere between Julia Holter and David Sylvian. “Following the release of the band’s fourth studio albumEquilibria(2024), Foundling entered a more open and contemplative sonic terrain with Artemisia, an ambient, harp-and flute-led work released via Shadow World Records.

Artemisia is largely instrumental, incorporating spoken word and improvised passages that emerge from carefully structured harmonic frameworks. The music balances intention and openness, allowing each performance to unfold differently in response to space, resonance, and collective presence.

In concert, Foundling’s performances emphasize immersion and attentiveness. Harp, voice, flute, and subtle electronics move between composed motifs and free, intuitive exploration, creating soundscapes that feel both grounded and alive. These performances often feel closer to listening rituals than traditional concerts, inviting audiences into shared moments of stillness and intensity.

Lang has toured extensively across Europe and North America, including over 70 performances supporting Agnes Obel at venues such as the Berlin Philharmonie, Le GrandRex, and Le Trianon in Paris, and has opened for Timber Timbre internationally. She has collaborated with Roger O’Donnell (The Cure) Lasse Martin (Lykke Li, Jónsi) Mark Lawson (Arcade Fire) and Mario Thaller (The Notwist, Lali Puna).

Alongside album releases and touring, Lang’s practice occasionally extends into sound-focused presentations for festivals and community spaces, informing her concert work while remaining rooted in live performance. For Fans of Harold Budd, Alice Coltrane, Grouper, Midori Takada, and Laraaji

A travelogue that unites physical and inner space, a series of trance states rendered in vivid colour, a delirious portal into the ether. Marlene Ribeiro’s debut for Rocket Recordings and first album under her own name is all of this and much more. Toquei No Sol is a fresh new chapter for this unique artist, by far the most melodic and transcendent outing yet for her hypnotic dreampop.

This is only the latest release in a long history of sonic experimentation for Marlene, which includes her previous work as Negra Branca across a series of releases on labels such as Tesla Tapes and Zamzam and a long period as a member of audial iconoclasts and Rocket mainstays GNOD, not to mention collaborations with the like of Valentina Magaletti and Thurston Moore.

Toquei No Sol is also a record with a very distinctive and potent sense of place, paradoxically despite having been woven together from recordings made in Ireland, Wales, Portugal, Madeira and Salford. It’s genesis came via a visit to Marlene’s maternal grandmother Emilia, whose influence as well as the sounds of her kitchen in Portugal can be heard on the album’s first track ‘Quatra Palavras’.

“Emilia ended up getting excited about me being able to record things there and then and – total news to me – told me she used to sing a lot when she was younger to the point of getting offered studio time but refusing it as she was fearful of what that could imply in those times” relates Marlene “From that point I planned to include her in this record as sort of the chance she never had of getting her voice out there.”

Elsewhere, a disarmingly catchy and irresistible grace is married to a utilitarian approach to sound and texture. The ritualistic “Sangue De Lua de Lobo” (first released on a Sofia records compilation Songs Of The Lunar Eclipse) contains random objects from Marlene’s then-garden in Ireland, whereas on the drifting, beatific ‘Forever’ the percussion tracks are constructed from the sounds of pots and pans in her own Salford kitchen.
Yet at all times her fleet-footed approach to melody rings through even as the tracks conjure visions of heat-hazes, meditative spaces and late-night epiphanies. Although listeners may hear echoes of the loop-driven psychedelia of Panda Bear’s Person Pitch or the incantatory ululations of Pocahaunted in these beguiling soundscapes and magick-strewn mantras, the truth is that the aesthetic here is very much Marlene’s alone.
“It’s all a big misty haze of nostalgia, playfulness, self-reflection and hopefulness” is what Marlene reckons herself. Yet Toquei No Sol is also a transporting vision from an artist both returning to her roots and looking out to new celestial horizons.