A travelogue that unites physical and inner space, a series of trance states rendered in vivid colour, a delirious portal into the ether. Marlene Ribeiro’s debut for Rocket Recordings and first album under her own name is all of this and much more. Toquei No Sol is a fresh new chapter for this unique artist, by far the most melodic and transcendent outing yet for her hypnotic dreampop This is only the latest release in a long history of sonic experimentation for Marlene, which includes her previous work as Negra Branca and as a member of GNOD, not to mention collaborations with Valentina Magaletti and Thurston Moore. Toquei No Sol is also a record with a very distinctive and potent sense of place, paradoxically despite having been woven together from recordings made in Ireland, Wales, Portugal, Madeira and Salford. Marlene’s fleet-footed approach to melody rings through even as the tracks conjure visions of heathazes, meditative spaces and late-night epiphanies. Although listeners may hear echoes of the loop-driven psychedelia of Panda Bear’s Person Pitch or the incantatory ululations of Pocahaunted in these beguiling soundscapes and magick-strewn mantras, the truth is that the aesthetic here is very much Marlene’s alone. “