THE ZEW

"One foot in, one foot out" is how "1FI1FO", the title of Leonie Schlager alias The Zew's debut album from last year, decodes itself - on the one hand a fitting parable for the "states of liminality" that her songwriting deals with, and on the other an apt description of her equally intimate, self-made and ethereally otherworldly sound. Schlager's consistently unagitated voice often sounds as if she is singing in the room next door, distanced from the tangible world by echo, reverb or distorted pitch, her mostly plucked electric guitar sometimes looped and then not, with a homely tendency towards warm, slightly muffled drone. The Zew calls this sound "cyborg folk", which in its melodic minimalism is sometimes a little reminiscent of Bridget St. John, Vashti Bunyan, Connie Converse or Nico in the days of "Chelsea Girl". Songs like "This is", "Itchy Feet", "The Collector" or "Come on Down" land in the unprepared ear with the naturalness of being everlasting, the aura of long-lost treasures. Yet The Zew is among us, and we can actually see her play at Popfest, with all six eyes on her face (she paints four of them on her cheeks, as symbols of the "female gaze"). "Here is that sound again, tipping me over."

(Robert Rotifer ORF/FM4)