Norwegian-Mexican artist Carmen Villain has shared a new video for “Impossible Color,” the closing track and last single taken from her instrumental album, Both Lines Will Be Blue, out this Friday, July 12th via Smalltown Supersound (Dungen, Neneh Cherry). The directorial debut of Teodora Georgjevic is a ritualistic meditation featuring Johanna Scheie Orellana, who gave birth just two days after the shoot. According to Carmen, “Teodora came to me with the idea and it was perfect; A woman in her ritual, tribute to generations, expectations… all in one room with one person. It feels like a complete circle since it features Johanna who plays flute on the album.”

From Carmen Villain:

“This video is meant to honor the rites of passage in a woman’s life”, explains Georgjevic. “In this context the altar is a way to honour that which came before while getting ready for the arrival of the next stage of life. The altar was also a great way to honour both Carmen and Johanna’s Latin American roots.”

Following 2017’s Infinite Avenue and 2013’s Sleeper, Both Lines Will Be Blue is Carmen’s first full instrumental album. A 7-track collection of cosmic excursions and dubby ambient-jams, the album is written, recorded, played, produced and mixed by Carmen in her Oslo studio. The soothing atmospherics are made up of tapestries of field recordings, synths, piano, drum-programming, zither and modular sounds. Throughout, Carmen’s music is colored by experimenting with different sounds and learning new techniques or by adding new instruments to the mix.

“I’ve been playing around with instrumentals for a long time, and it was something I wanted to do more with after I finished Infinite Avenue,” says Carmen. “Leaving out my voice and lyrics got me out of my own head a bit, which I needed. Working with sound is to me the ultimate meditation and is a more unconscious way of expressing whatever is going on inside.”

Carmen got her in to the studio to both record melodies that she had written, as well as making plenty of room for impro/freeform. Prins Thomas also appears on the record, playing percussion on “I Could Sit Here All Day.”