Tag Archives: Dos Floris

Dos Floris, Strawberry Fair, Cambridge, 1 June 2024

The Strawberry Fair – Cambridge’s highly regarded free festival of music and culture is a platform for a huge range of talented acts and as the darkness fell across the site singer/songwriter/musician Dos Floris arrived on stage. Many of her earlier recordings and shows feature dense instrumentation and fabulous electronic soundscapes but tonight the songs were stripped back to an effects-free acoustic guitar. This emphasises the resonance, strength and sensitivity of her natural voice – a powerful instrument indeed.

She opened with the confiding, dreamlike ‘The Other Side’ (‘….in this fading light nobody feel the pain…’), which added a mellow warmth to the cold summer evening. New song ‘Fireflies’ continued to weave the magic along with the subtle melancholy of ‘Mexico’ (‘…..but if there’s a chance, we’ll go wipe our tears away go dance in Mexico….’). It was the gentle grandeur of ‘Mountains’ that stole the show; short lyrical phrases and effective melody building to a grand finish.

Florence Donovan aka Dos Floris splits her time between Italy and UK so it was a rare treat to see her perform In Cambridge (also as part of a bill with Tape Runs Out and Scatterchild at the Blue Moon the previous evening!).

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Dos Floris, Lexington, London, 13 November 2017

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The opening night of a short tour by electronica performer Dos Floris, with more dates to follow in the spring next year. The Lexington is one of those cool London venues with a legacy of many musicians playing on their way upwards.
Opening the show was Orlando Seale, with a stage decorated with inflatable animals and swimming aids, he introduced an unconventional support set, with elements of performance art keeping the audience on their toes. He was accompanied by a clipboard-wielding actor who chose to commend or reprimand Orlando on the quality of his performance as well as a second guitarist wrenching unearthly electric sounds to complement the calm and simple delivery of some haunting songs such as the sublime ‘Wrestling’.
He has recorded a superb EP and more with a full orchestral backing, tonight’s show was a complete contrast but nonetheless as effective.

If watching Orlando was like being part of a play by Samuel Beckett, the one-woman powerhouse that is Dos Floris took us onto another heavenly plain altogether. Florence Donovan is an excellent singer and pianist, as showcased later in the show with the stripped-back ‘Human Relations’ but her use of electronic loops, layers and textures brings her debut album to sparkling life this evening. ‘To The Wolves Part 1’ sets the agenda of sweeping soundscape and holds the audience riveted, their silent attention being testament to the compulsion of the occasion.

There is a pleasing unpredictability to the live versions of the tracks, with so many keyboard buttons that can be pressed to twist and enhance. The bass pulse of ‘That Day’ rocks you to the core, the anti-war message of ‘All The Kings Horses’ still cuts through and ‘Before You Loved Me’ is stunningly effective. The album title track ‘The Widowed Earth’ weaves its ethereal spell and when the show is all over somehow those haunting sounds are still echoing around this fine venue as Florence leaves the stage.

http://www.dosfloris.com/
http://www.orlandoseale.com/

Dos Floris, Highgate, London, 29 April 2017

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Opposite the well-established Boogaloo music pub on the main street in Highgate is The Red Hedgehog; an unassuming bar/café and the venue for the second night of a showcase from multi-instrumentalist and singer Dos Floris.

The set featured tracks from her majestic debut album ‘The Widowed Earth’, performed with striking confidence, depth and power. The show divided into a lighter and darker half, reflected by the costumes and new arrangements of these organic soundscapes. As a pulsating light back-projection links to the vocal sounds early tracks ‘Rivers’ and ‘The Other Side’ gently draw us into her world. Florence has complete mastery of the complex looping, multi-tracking and keyboard playing needed to bring everything alive, demonstrated to great effect on the faster post-apocalyptic groove ‘That Day’ and a funky version of ‘All The King’s Men’ (featuring the tones of a metal-stringed walking stick?). As the music grew in intensity and the back projection ended up like virtual barbed wire to reflect the anti-war sentiment of the lyric we were ready for a short interval.

On resuming the empathetic soundman seemed to crank up some of the denser bass tones so we could wallow in the gorgeous ‘Before You Loved Me’ and ‘The Widowed Earth’. In an older unrecorded song ‘Starlight’ the audience boosted the lightshow with glowsticks, then the superb ‘To The Wolves Part II’ was a natural choice for the finale, with an encore of the new ‘Human Relations’ pointing the sound in a different direction for the forthcoming album.

It was a triumphant performance! Sitting back and listening carefully I could hear the way that every small sonic element fits in, looped phrases drift in and out again and fill the spaces in between; just as astronomers search for the dark matter invisible amongst the bright galaxies, in this music the whole adds up to far more than the sum of the parts…

http://www.dosfloris.com/

Dos Floris, Corner House, Cambridge, 17 July 2016

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On a steamy summer evening the place to be was the Cambridge Corner House pub and venue, for a rare UK appearance of singer and multi-instrumentalist Dos Floris.

Opening the show was a special set from Bouquet Of Dead Crows, pared down to Toni Cooper’s voice and acoustic guitar from Neil Bruce. At present they are working on a follow-up to their accomplished song collection ‘Of The Night’, and tonight there were re-imagined versions of many of the tracks from that album. Musically Neil added extra guitar nuance and colour to underpin Toni’s confident vocals which combined to great effect, especially on the new single ‘Epicentre’.

I have been an admirer of the majestic Dos Floris album ‘The Widowed Earth’ since its release, and at the time of writing I still can’t quite believe that I was watching a performance of that hypnotic music and meeting its creator.

The sound is complex and multi-layered, necessitating some backing percussion and electronics being co-ordinated by laptop, but there was plenty of interesting keyboard lines and experimental effects played live as the tracks developed beyond the album versions. Add in some flute, a pure captivating voice and looped backing vocals for the complete picture.

The ‘natural world’ theme that threads through these songs is most evident in ‘Rivers’ but so cleverly are the music and words intertwined that the simple protest of ‘All The Kings Horses’ seems to be a statement that war is somehow a violation of nature (and possibly is as effective a statement against the Iraq War as the 2.6 million words of the Chilcott Report?!).

One of the highlights was ‘Before You Loved Me’, a torch song that could be from 1920s Berlin if they had had waves of electronica in the jazz clubs. Then a version of ‘To The Wolves Part II’ was dedicated to this humble reviewer which made the evening even better…

http://www.dosfloris.com

Dos Floris : The Widowed Earth, released November 2017

http://www.bouquetofdeadcrows.com/

Dos Floris : The Widowed Earth, released November 2017

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Based in Italy, Dos Floris is the performing and recording name of Florence Donovan. Her debut album ‘The Widowed Earth’ is a dense, multi-layered collection of atmospheric vocal and electronic pieces. Each track is crafted and complex, substantial yet brittle enough to slip through your fingers.

Every one of these cinematic soundscapes is given plenty of time to construct the right instrumental mood and reveals more on subsequent listens.A brief intro of a cassette loading gives way to ‘Rivers’, a pastoral theme built from a simple flute figure with the addition of ever-changing keyboards. The vocal simmers and yearns before final resignation. The electronic waves of ‘Before You Loved Me’ pulsing through the track, the gentle and unpredictable piano chords like droplets of rain in ‘Water’, the loose drum patterns in ‘The Other Side’ supporting simple vocal phrases; it is all elegant and addictive.
I really like the title track ‘The Widowed Earth’, huge swathes of synthesised strings in the introduction then the sustained vocal interweaves like another instrument.

In nearly an hour of music there is plenty more to get lost in, including the two part epic ‘To The Wolves’. As a change to guitar music, give this album a late-night listen.

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