Lida Husik – Bozo

Originally from Washington D.C., singer-songwriter Lida Husik settled in to New York in the late ’80s and signed to seminal label Shimmy Disc, home to artists such as Ween, Galaxie 500 and Daniel Johnston. Her debut album Bozo is an introspective collection of dreamy demo-like songs with most instruments recorded by Husik herself. In many ways, the sound presented here is far ahead of its time and predates the music of Beth Orton (post-Chemical Brothers) and Lori Carson (post-Golden Palominos). Opener “Bozo” features an apocalyptic sort of sci-fi mood with multiple layers of Husik’s dusky vocals alongside psychedelic organ and some chaotic sampled television vocals a la ambient chillout room music. Husik on the sampled vocals: “Well, it’s in place because it’s what I like to listen to. I listen to total ambient house and shit, and what happened was, we knew we wanted to do a really cool house-y thing, using a lot of samples, and we only had our sampler equipment for an hour.” Husik would later go on to collaborate with Artificial Intelligence era UK producer Beaumont Hannant and realize her dream of recording an electronic album.

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