Lolina - Unrecognisable

First released digitally back in March of this year, Inga Copeland's latest outing under the Lolina moniker finally makes its way to a much deserved vinyl edition and with it provides a means to dig into the alterna-universe Copeland has been generating around Unrecognisable. And there's a fair bit of catching up to do here. The Unrecognisable concept originally began as an online graphic novel and interactive soundtrack about a dystopian future world at war and the activities of a resistant group led by the characters Paris Hell and Geneva Heat. A second chapter, entitled 'Paris' Dream', was realised as an improvised live performance built from samples of the original soundtrack. And now for its third chapter we have this album of extra music that extends the narrative further into the dark corners of the midnight world Copeland has conjured. That's a lot to process admittedly, but Copeland is nothing if not playful (not to mention provocative), and regardless of whether you've experienced the first two chapters or not, there's a lot to instantly enjoy here. Speak-singing her way throughout, we get a series of vignettes detailing a pair of anti-heroes that's equal parts romanticised outsiderdom, femme fatale and European glamour, every bit as crepuscular as you'd hope such things to be. If the narrative is rich, then the sonic accompaniment is minimalist by contrast, built from rudimentary drum machine presets and single note synth lines, the kind of electronic anti-pop you might have first connected with Kitty-Yo and their attendant group of provocateurs. Things are rarely straightforward with Copeland, and especially when recording as Lolina, but Unrecognisable is about her most obvious concession to pop accessibility yet, which is of course relative but also provides a great means of diving into her skewed and wayward vision. Let's see where a chapter four might take us...