LUISA's 'Rise' is a three-track testimony that turns lived history into living sound

Some records feel like they’re documenting a feeling, but 'Rise' feels like it’s documenting a life. LUISA’s new three-track outing draws inspiration from the environments she’s moved through, before exhaling them back as one of the most affecting hybrid works of the year. It’s a project built on places, people, atmospheres, and ruptures woven into a form that refuses to sit comfortably in any one category.

The opening piece 'Enchant' arrives like a sunrise that hasn’t fully revealed itself. Voices curl around each other in gently shifting patterns, flickering between chant and sigh, while hand-played percussion and reed instruments push the piece forward. LUISA’s ability to marry pulse with breath gives it a sense of movement that feels instinctual rather than arranged.

If the first track is a horizon widening, 'Rise' is the moment the ground gives way. This is LUISA at her most unflinching. Metallic textures scrape the edges of the stereo field; fragmented shouts leave shadows where lyrics might be; while hythms lurch like a street under tension. The track churns and throbs with a kind of embodied urgency, the kind that comes from witnessing real lives reshaped by forces beyond their control.

Then there’s 'Spring', the unexpected breath that ties everything together. Light taps, chiming melodies, and field-recorded voices capture a fleeting normalcy that feels both comforting and precarious. LUISA treats these sounds with reverence, as if acknowledging that joy is its own form of resistance.

What sets 'Rise' apart is how deeply embedded LUISA’s experiences are in its fabric. You can hear the imprint of cities in flux, communities in conversation, and landscapes that have shaped her understanding of belonging and displacement. It’s electronic music with dirt on its hands and history in its lungs.

Despite its brevity, 'Rise' feels monumental. It shows an artist unafraid to mix the tactile with the digital, the vulnerable with the volatile, and the personal with the collective. LUISA has crafted a work that stands as a sonic archive of a world in motion, and a reminder that the most powerful stories often arrive without words at all.