Julianna Barwick
By Charlotte Stace
Julianna Barwick’s music rewards both light and heavy attention – it can be the perfect background for reading or studying, but it's also deep, layered and nuanced, an ethereal, loops-based world to get lost in. As such she is the perfect artist for a show at Casa Montjuic, a space that seems to have been custom-made for exactly the sort of ambient-drone bliss-outs that this live show is likely to provide.
Barwick emerged from LA in the late 2000s, developing a unique approach to ambient music that blends choral textures, reverb-heavy harmonies and minimal instrumentation, and creating pieces that feel both intimate and cathedral-like in scale. Her breakthrough album The Magic Place (2011) established her as a fearless sonic explorer of space, voice and transcendence, and her records and live shows since then have continually developed this very specific and gloriously enveloping mission.