The strife of modern life and the collective’s struggle with peace fuelled the searing new track from Taleen Kali, “Flower of Life”. The hypnotic chant, seemingly emerging from the bowels of Hell, has roots in riot grrl, 90s grunge, and goth. If Siouxsie had miraculously cut a record with Pixies or Bikini Kill collaborated with Curve, you’d have Kali’s general sound. Her impassioned delivery, which ranges from silky purrs to howling banshee wails, highlights that the roots of the song’s minimalist lyrics, about surviving hell, run deep.
With “Flower of Life,” native Angeleno Taleen Kali fuses a cosmic sound that’s both dreamy and defiant. Influenced by melodies and imagery from her Armenian heritage and her parents’ birthplaces of Lebanon and Ethiopia, Kali fuses her lineage with the modern countercultures she grew up embracing. This remix of her track by Glaare is the stuff of unsettling dreams.
“I wrote Flower of Life as a response to the collective hell we’ve been going through since 2016,” says Kali. “Although the song is about coming back to life and making it through to the other side, there’s also a death drive within the album…During the early stages of the pandemic I would walk my dog around the block for hours and got to know Glaare better since we’d see each other in the same neighborhood–it was the second time we ran into each other serendipitously after being in each other’s sonic orbits for a while, and we began to forge a friendship. When the song came out back in April I sent it to Brandon to dive deeper and expose its dark underbelly, giving it another life.”
Listen below:
Flower Of Life was recorded at The Cave Studios in the winter of 2022 with producers Jeff Schroeder (The Smashing Pumpkins) and Josiah Mazzaschi (Bizou, Light FM, Child Seat).
Soul Songs, Taleen’s debut EP, was produced by Kristin Kontrol (Dum Dum Girls) and mixed by Brad Laner of Medicine at the legendary Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood.
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