LUCIDMEDIA

From a Land Down Under: Amaya Laucirica

Written by Adam A. Donaldson Thursday, 18 June 2009 10:04

Amaya Laucirica’s biography on her website says that she was “born into the rural solitude of Millicent, South Australia.” Millicent, in the south eastern part of the state of South Australia, is a typical rural town with a population of 5,000. “There was one high school and one record store,” recalls Laucirica about her roots. “I grew up pretty much an only child, so that left me to my own devices and there really wasn’t that much to do. So I guess out of boredom I started playing instruments and writing songs.”

Laucirica originally considered pouring the inspiration from the space and landscapes into her first artistic love: painting. But like many young artists, Laucirica found small town life restraining and decided to make the move to the big city: Melbourne. The move was significant to Laucirica because it marked the shift of her artistic focus from painting to music.

“It was a move towards something I wanted to start working on, which was the first record,” she says. “I think when I decided that I was going to move to Melbourne to centre my life around music, then that was the realization that it had become much more than a hobby to me.”

Was it a difficult transition to go from small town life to the big city? Not at all, says Laucirica. “I had not begun or wanted to begin a career in anything else so there were no obstacles to overcome. I had felt it was something I wanted to do for a long time.”

If you’ve never heard the music of Amaya Laucirica before, it can be most comfortably categorized as folk. Like any musician though, Laucirica hears more than that, and she says that she sometimes has trouble categorizing it herself. “I would say at times it is folky, ambient, ethereal and goes well with a glass of red wine,” describes Laucirica. “My style keeps changing, even though it comes from the same place all the time, and at the time is influenced by whatever I’m listening to, whether it’s a Cat Power or Neil Young record.”

The mention of Neil Young is interesting because it isn’t Laucirica’s only Canadian connection. Her new album, Sugar Lights,was mastered by Peter J. Moore who’s worked with Cowboy Junkies and Lucinda Williams, among other notable names. The connection was rather easy to make, according to Laucirica.

“While we were recording Sugar Lights a friend of mines band, Khancoban, were just about finishing their record and were having it mastered in the US,” she explains. “I had no idea you could do that [over the internet], and when I discovered that, it just opened up a whole world of possibilities. I went through some records I really liked the sound of, and that I thought might suit our sound and came across Peter Moore. So I just did the general thing: I e-mailed his address and within days he had agreed to master the album.”

The aforementioned album, Sugar Lights, is her first. Tying things back to her roots, Laucirica says that she thinks that the affects of life growing up in the Millicent area have carried through into her song-writing on an unconscious level. “I hear those things as an after-thought, after I have written the songs most of the time,” she says. “On Sugar Lights I think I’m really just trying to translate the places where I’ve been and where I want to go, so Millicent is a piece of the picture in there.”

To Laucirica, North By Northeast means playing the first overseas crowd ever for her and her band. As a sneak preview, half of Sugar Lights has been posted on her website, so that Toronto music fans can download five tracks and get a taste of what they can expect when Laucirica comes to town. “There have been some people in Toronto downloading the songs so hopefully we can bring some people down to our show,” adds Laucirica. “I think it’s mostly about making the connections so that we can hopefully come back and do an even bigger tour of North America.”

You can sample Sugar Lights for yourself at http://www.amayalaucirica.com/nxne

Amaya Laucirica
Cameron House
Saturday, June 20th, 11:00 pm