There’s a make-believe, fairy tale surrealism that sets Winter‘s blend of dream pop and shoegaze apart from her contemporaries. Growing up in Curitiba, Brazil, Samira Winter’s Brazilian mother filled their home with the gentle melodies of MPB (música popular brasileira), while her father introduced her to the distorted sounds of American punk. It’s this melting pot of sonic influences that informed her singular style, pulling from disparate sources to craft something wholly original.
At 18, she relocated to the US to study at Boston’s Emerson College, where she first released music under the Winter name, though it wasn’t until the band relocated to LA’s Echo Park that things began to truly take shape. Operating on the fuzzy border of the burgeoning garage scene, Winter built a cult following with a stream of bilingual releases and national tours opening for artists like Broncho and Cherry Glazerr. The bands stateside success took them to Mexico, Europe, and South America, where Samira bonded with kindred spirits in the psych-pop outfit Boogarins.
Fall 2019 saw her sign to Bar/None Records (Yo La Tengo, Of Montreal) and release an EP of lo-fi, diaristic sketches more akin to Red House Painters and Sparkle Horse than the dream pop grandeur of her past releases. The stripped back songs provided a clear vision of an artist coming into her own as a songwriter, and set the stage for a new chapter.
On Endless Space (Between You & I), her forthcoming and debut LP for the label, Winter presents her most realized vision yet, drawing inspiration from Broadcast and Melody’s Echo Chamber for a glorious, 3-D journey into her world. Invigorated by a rediscovered bedroom demo, Winter built out her unfinished songs with the help of multi-instrumentalist Ian Gibbs, who engineered and produced the 11-tracks before passing them off to Pat Jones (Toro y Moi, Washed Out) for fine tuning.
The resulting album is a masterclass in attention to detail – flickering guitars sputter in reverse, panning from left to right in perfect synch, while snippets of field recordings are delicately interspersed throughout. On lead single “Say”, the deluge of synthesizers is carefully managed, their ebb and flow building momentum without ever overpowering the song, highlighting the tightly wound drum and bass groove. “Bem no Fundo” sees Winter and Boogarins vocalist Dinho Almeida in a bilingual duet, their pauses punctuated by stabs of fuzzed out guitar and glistening keys.
Thematically, the album is deeply introspective, turning inward to examine Samira’s esoteric world. On “Here I Am Existing”, inspiration was taken from the Mary Oliver poem “I’m Feeling Fabulous, Possibly Too Much So. But I Love It”, which explores the feeling of being in natural harmony with one’s surroundings. Those themes are reflected in the reverb soaked samples of bird sounds, and the airy refrain of “take me to the forest”. In the otherworldly visual for the title track, the odd movements of time lapsed nature scenes lend an alien quality to the songs warbly arpeggios, setting the scene for a record that barely feels tethered to earth.
On Endless Space, Samira Winter has truly arrived, a technicolor daydream in aural form.
Today we are so excited to announce the forthcoming album from LA’s Winter, Endless Space (Between You & I), her first full length for Bar/None Records! We’ve teamed up with The FADER to share lead single “Say”, a dark groove that perfectly introduces the album and Winter’s new sound.
❁Tour Dates❁
Buy Tickets
March 15 – Love Buzz – El Paso, TX +
March 24 – The Quarry – Bisbee, AZ +
May 6 – Launchpad – Albuquerque, AZ*
May 8 – The Echo – Los Angeles, CA*
May 9 – Bottom of the Hill – San Francisco, CA*
May 10 – Ukiah Brewing Company – Ukiah, CA*
May 12 – Lucky You Lounge – Spokane, WA*
May 13 – Fox Cabaret – Vancouver, BC*
May 14 – Alma Mater – Tacoma, WA*
May 15 – Make.Shift Project – Bellingham, WA*
May 16 – Doug Fir Lounge – Portland, OR*
May 17 – Neurolux – Boise, ID*
May 19 – Globe Hall – Denver, CO*
May 20 – Urban Lounge – Salt Lake City, UT*
May 22 – The Starlet Room – Sacramento, CA*
May 23 – Soho – Santa Barbara, CA*
May 24 – Casbah – San Diego, CA*
May 25 – Hotel Congress – Tucson, AZ*
May 27 – Hotel Vegas – Austin, TX*
May 28 – Satellite Bar – Houston, TX*
May 29 – One Eyed Jacks – New Orleans, LA*
May 30 – Alabama Music Box – Mobile, AL*
May 31 – Chizuko’s – Pensacola, FL*
June 6 – Ballyhoo Festival – Indianapolis, IN
+ w/ Justus Proffit
* w/ Surfer Blood
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By: Bass Magazine