Dspic Antonio Torres

Influenced by Brazilian pop and the music of her native Argentina, Gabriela Anders spent much time in America soaking up jazz and R&B sensibilities, all of which inform her singing. The daughter of a jazz saxophone player, Anders studied classical guitar while a child but moved to piano study at a Buenos Aires conservatory. She spent much time in New York as well, soaking up the music of tenor specialists John Coltrane, Stan Getz and Dexter Gordon. She also studied with Don Sebesky and began singing with Grover Washington, Jr. and Tito Puente while going to college. A brief time in Japan resulted in her first album, 1996's Fantasia (recorded as Beleza), though she had returned to New York by 1997. After sending a demo tape into Warner Jazz, Anders signed a contract and released Wanting in August 1998.

Recent scholarship on Luis Misón (Mataró, 1727–Madrid, 1766) demonstrates the growing interest among the musicological community in studying the life and work of one who is an essential composer in the history of Spanish music. Musical historiography has extolled Misón's contribution to the genre of the tonadilla escénica, a genre widely appreciated in his time and which must have had a notable influence on his instrumental music, about which less is known.

Recorded at Middle Farm Studios in Devon, UK, Thirstier marks a turn towards a bigger, more bombastic sound for TORRES. The anxious hush that fell over much of Scott’s previous music gets turned inside-out in songs tailored for a new chapter of life. Scott co-produced the album with Rob Ellis (best known for his stunning work with PJ Harvey) and Peter Miles. Also contributing parts on multiple songs is Portishead's own Adrian Utley (synth) & multi-instrumentalist Ben Christophers (Bat for Lashes, Anna Calvi). Guitar-driven walls of sound, reminiscent of producer Butch Vig’s work with Garbage and Nirvana, surge and dissipate like surf in high winds, carrying Scott’s commanding voice to the fore.

What an enormous room is not only the title of the album by TORRES, it is an incantation, a phrase she has had in her head now for several years. In the video for What an enormous room's debut single "Collect," Scott finds herself alone in rooms that stretch beyond the frame of the camera. You can observe details of the rooms-the rubble and support beams in one, the lighting in the other-but they neither define their purpose nor explain her presence in them; these are large spaces whose lack of definition invites anxiety and even fear. What does Scott do when cast against that kind of uncertainty? She dances. She throws herself against it. When she sings "look at all the dancing I can do," it's an invitation to awe, and there is much here to be awed by. What an enormous room contains wry, Laurie Anderson-esque art rock, Nirvana's rage, and ABBA's strut. Rather than fear the unknown, Scott has chosen to fill it with as much of herself as possible, an artist unwilling to be stifled.