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“Zone” is taken from Olga Bell‘s LP “Tempo“, which was released in May 2016. Get your copy or stream it there.

Follow Olga Bell on her official website, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, and Facebook.

BONUS: Rediscover Olga Bell‘s cover of Aaliyah‘s massive hit “Are You That Somebody”

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The video was directed by Tokyo-based artist and programmer Baku Hashimoto, who worked closely with Bell in an online-exclusive collaboration. The result feels completely digital too. Black-and-white footage of Olga chilling out in the Rockaways is manipulated through 3D matte painting into tableaux of what looks like distorted bits of a .jpeg file that had an unfortunate encounter with electronic shredder. Enter the bewildering world of the inside of a picture below.

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“TEMPO” is out now. Buy it on iTunes.

It’s going to cater to the body, Olga Bell‘s new album. Its name is “TEMPO” and if you have paid attention, you should know already it’s impossible not to move along its first single “Randomness“. Now it’s time to leave the dance floor for the moody afterparty of the second cut “ATA”.

There is something strange about “ATA”. It is not the kind of alienating strangeness one finds in things hard to get. It’s a feeling more akin to slight disorientation following a surprise. A pulsating synth bass slithers on the semi-empty floor of the track, which is full of space and scattered with blips and clicks, and opens up into a soft harpsichord-like lead when it reaches the middle. This sonic narrative is not accidental. The song is a sort of electronic rendition of Frank O’Hara’s poem “A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island“, in which the sun itself comforts the poet about the value of his art while death and powerlessness keep echoing in the background, and as the sun starts talking, everything turns brighter. Another influence was Art of Noise’s “Moments in Love“, one of those classics nobody knows the title of. But there is none of that slow-mo sweetness here. “ATA” is brooding, meditative and self-aware, an artist facing her own condition. As cerebral as its premise and lyrics are, it is with the body that it wants you to listen. So play it below and feel it in your stomach. Headphones highly recommended.

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“TEMPO” is out May 27th. Pre-order it here.

[su_dropcap style=”simple”]S[/su_dropcap]erious people of the world, it’s time to put on your dancing shoes and get loose. It’s Olga Bell who advices you to. The restless Brooklynite, born in Moscow like geniuses Dostoevsky and t.A.T.u but raised in Alaska, is back with a new album tailored specifically for the body. Inspired by classic documentary “Paris Is Burning” and beat-driven ’90s music, “TEMPO” is going to be a physical record, an exploration of high speed, low pace, everything in between and the way they feel inside and outside. The first single is titled “Randomness” and you can hear it below.

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With its 125 beats per minute, “Randomness” is not a song you can sit down to. It commands you to turn whatever surface your feet are touching into an improvised dance floor. Don’t worry if you’re the shy type, it doesn’t want anything crazy from you. It is house music but of a strange, mutant type that allows for every kind of move as long as it comes from a place of liberation. Think of the crazy dances you would invent to MTV when you were a child: that is the spirit. Those ’90s dance hits are what Olga was inspired by, wonderful classics like Crystal Waters, Black Box and Robin S. that she remembers from her first years in the US. Don’t expect the sparkle and gloss those songs had. “Randomness” dissected its references with a digital scalpel and reassembled them diagonally, on a tilted angle, in a new weirder structure. One thing is sure though: the core is still the same. It’s music for you as a body, a simple body with no further classifier, a body that moves above all. Let’s have a ball. Category is: humans getting their kicks.

The video for “Randomness” was directed by Minister Atkins and serves ’90 house realness but with a much more subdued vibe, as it was a German Expressionist silent film about vogue culture. The dancers featured here are the center, and the periphery, of the action. Everything revolves around their gorgeous movements, severe one moment and fluid immediately after. Olga giving face and minimalist eleganza has our approval, too.

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Written, produced and performed by Bell, “TEMPO” is out June 3rd via One Little Indian. Check cover art and tracklist below.

01. “Power User”
02. “Doppio”
03. “Randomness”
04. “ATA”
05. “Regular”
06. “Zone”
07. “Ritual” (ft. Sara Lucas)
08. “Your Life is a Lie”
09. “Stomach It”
10. “America”