Bell, Olga

Born in Moscow . At the age of seven, she immigrated with her mother to Anchorage , Alaska .

In Alaska, she studied piano at the Russian pianist Svetlana Velichko ^[3] . In 2005 she graduated from the New England Conservatory (Boston), after which she moved to New York and began to try her hand at popular (including electronic) music. At the same time, for five years, she made a living from piano lessons and accompaniment in the theater ^[4] .

In 2007, the group she assembled released the mini-album Bell . In 2011, along with Gunnar Olsen ( Eng. Gunnar Olsen ) and Jason Nazary ( Eng. Jason Nazary ) released an electro-pop album Diamonite ^[5] . For a short time she was a member of the pop rock band Chairlift , after which she joined the Dirty Projectors as a keyboard player and vocalist ^{[6] [2]} . She also collaborated with multi-instrumentalist du ( Nothankyou duet).

In 2014, Krai released the ethno-album Krai , according to Olga herself, “in fact, an academic piece for an ensemble of 12 people (although among them there is a drummer, a bass player, and a guitarist)” ^[3] . Each composition of the album is dedicated to one of the regions of the Russian Federation that existed at that time. The composition was preceded by serious preparatory work: “I read everything I could; my mother, who still had her own radio program in Moscow about music, told me about the Cossacks, about their singing; plus one of her friends sent me a whole folder of field records. Well and so on - I was looking for everything, down to some sounds of nature: I remember about the Primorsky Territory I watched a video of a trucker who recorded on the receptionist how tigers were running through the forest. And the other just posted a video with the singing of one small seaside bird - and I inserted her part into the music, it almost sounds like a guitar ” ^[3] . The texts of several compositions are folklore, while others are copyrighted (her mother Marina helped Olga to work on them) ^[7] .

The album received positive reviews from critics ^{[8] [9]} , in particular, the reviewer of Volna, noting the stylistic eclecticism of the album (“I remember not only Beldy - it’s clear that Olga Bell helped a lot with the experience with Dirty Projectors and Chairlift, but here love for IDM, and minimalist composers "), concludes that" on the way out, in a rather ironic way, one of the best Russian-language records of this year is obtained " ^[10] .

In 2016, she released her third studio album Tempo ^{[11] [12]} , returning to electronic music. “On the third solo record, Bell goes into glitch and techno - in any other case, such changes would be perplexing, but Olga perfectly conveys the emotions from“ Tempo ”through the cover of the album, on which the artist smiles conspiratorially and thereby masterfully breaks down pathos. Bell draws inspiration from The Knife Swedes and mixes a bit of idiosyncrasy with the deliberately clumsy “instrumentalists”, and Karin Dreyer from the same The Knife and Björk obviously influenced her vocal style ... ” ^[13] .

• Official site
• YouTube Channel
• Olga Bell BELL (Music Fashion Magazine, 2009)
• Olga Bell (The Great Discontent, 2012)
• “Reckoning with my Russianness”: Olga Bell on Origin / Outcome (Walker Art Center, 2014)
• Nika Danilova (Zola Jesus) Talks Olga Bell's Krai (The Talk House, 2014)
• Conversation with Alexander Kahn at the London BBC Studio