NATALIE BERIDZE

Tusia Beridze: The Next Bjork?

Natalie Beridze, also known as Tusia Beridze, or TBA, doesn’t spend a lot of time worrying about her many aliases. Instead, she’s been literally holed up in a bunker-based studio in the former Soviet republic of Georgia making evocative, often heartbreaking glitchy techno. With three previous, critically-acclaimed albums on Thomas Brinkmann’s Max.Ernst label, Beridze has once again eclipsed her own best work on her most dazzling recording to date, The Other.

Watch Natalie Beridze/TBA’s Stunning New Video

Over the summer, Georgian singer/producer Natalie Beridze (a.k.a. TBA) released a five-track EP on Monika Enterprise entitled What About Things Like Bullets. The title track of that EP now has an illustrious, imaginative music video created by Nika Machaidze that features Beridze as a comic book version of herself. The video makes clear the political intent of Beridze’s lyrics as Cold War-style animations depict her as both general and soldier in an unidentified war, fighting for who-knows-what. On March 15, Monika Enterprise will also release Beridze’s next full-length, Forgetfulness, building off the tracks released on last summer’s EP. Check out the video above and the tracklist for Forgetfulness below.

… Currently a resident of Tbilisi after a spell in Berlin, Beridze parses some 14 years of previously unreleased work 2007-2021 on this new LP for Room 40, tapping into her synaesthetic sensibilities for a quietly shimmering, poetic suite of ambient-chamber pieces. There’s a particularly blissed and calming feel to proceedings, with smudged vocals unfurling glossolalic murmurs that say it without saying it, while her carefully layered arrangements lull us into soporific states; eyes shut and skin porous to feelings. …

Natalie Beridze – Of Which One Knows

Dass in der Musik von Natalie Beridze ein grösserer Anspruch als bloss die Unterhaltung steckt, ist klar. «Of Which One Knows» ist ein Album und gleichzeitig eine Sammlung von Kompositionen, die sich nicht so einfach kategorisieren und in andere Projekte einfügen liessen. Eine Übersicht diverser Möglichkeiten und Herangehensweisen an Sound und Melodie, Ambient, Pop, Electronica und eine Spur Klassik. Neun Lieder in 40 Minuten, ein Handschlag zwischen organischen und anorganischen Elementen im Leben. …

Leben in Langsamkeit

Die georgische Produzentin Natalie Beridze hat ihr Album „Of Which One Knows“ veröffentlicht. In der minimalistischen Musik arbeitet sie mit Reduktion.

Einer Kirchenorgel werden Töne entlockt, die von Ferne an Johann Sebastian Bachs „Präludium“ erinnern. Das Knarzen des alten „lebendigen“ Holzbodens der Empore rahmt die Orgeltöne ein. Trotzdem klingt „Sadness“, das Finale von Natalie Beridzes neuem Album „Of Which One Knows“ aufgeräumt.

Denn die 43-jährige georgische Künstlerin braucht für dieses Klangbild nicht mehr als einen Laptop und ein Midi-Keyboard. Ihr gelingen mit minimalem Equipment maximale Kompositionen, die keinen Adressaten brauchen, dafür aber Räume schaffen. …

When Natalie and I were working on Of Which One Knows, she sent through a great deal of material. Initially we’d discussed a record that charted out the various themes and interests that have guided her work over the past decade or so. Listening through all the pieces, it was instantly clear she had enough materials to make more than one edition. The works too seemed to self organise, and suggest ways of connecting that felt almost intuitive. In Front Of You is the result of part of that self organisation.

These works, whilst seemingly divergent, share a very specific and measured sense of space, silence, timbre and harmony. They are patient works, pieces that invite you to dwell within them. They are also works that seem to unfold or unlock in ways you don’t necessarily expect.

Nothing Explodes, the heart of this collection, ties together these threads. It acts like a body from which the limb-like other pieces extend and shape one another. Natalie’s work is simultaneously beautiful and haunting. She creates states that move in parallel, inviting us to pour ourselves into them, and in doing so she shows us something about ourselves we might not have previously recognised.

The main pioneers of the ’90s were Bajoo, Natalie TBA Beridze, Dima Dadiani, Gogi Dzodzuashvili and Nika Machaidze; none of them being classically trained musicians. … Alongside Beridze, who is also a teacher at the CES, and the school’s founder Natia Sartiani, there are seven female producers featured who graduated from the school’s Music Production course. One of them is Anushka Chkheidze, who started just two years ago to produce electronic music yet she is one of the most active live performers in Georgia. … Female producers, however, are still much less prominent in electronic music because families very often don’t support women who wish to be a musician, as Beridze says: “Women in Georgia, or should I say in Tbilisi, are now slowly starting to rebel this feeling of being looked at as some sorts of complimentary subjects of men around them. I personally was raised in a family where sexism was not an issue and the power was equal, so I didn’t feel the pressure to be what I’m not.”