Scottish and Danish composer Clarissa Connelly makes her debut on Warp Records with “World of Work”, exploring themes of acceptance and growth, by creating a sonic embroidery, a powerful testimony of her production and composition abilities.
Over the years Clarissa has explored sacred sites and mythology, finding inspiration in Celtic and Nordic culture. For her most recent album, “The Voyager”, Clarissa walked the
Scandinavian landscape, channelling melodies from ancient pre-Christian sites. The album received global acclaim and was awarded the prestigious Nordic Music Prize.
World of Work comes together as a dream-like synthesis of Nordic folk song, Celtic myth, medieval grimoires, modern pop music, as well as experimental composition and studio practices. It explores the sacred and the profane with the guidance of 20th-century French philosopher Georges Bataille.
The title itself is plucked from Bataille’s L'érotisme, "Man has come to know the exterior world [of work], but he remains ignorant of his own nature. [Yet] if he had not first awoken to awareness through work, he would know nothing at all." Connelly notes the two main ‘characters’ of the album are Work and Desire, where Work reflects the profane, the quotidien, mundanity, and Desire exists as exaltation, the body pushed to physical limits, art, ecstasy. The two exist simultaneously, giving us the human experience. Clarissa equates the idea of a “world of work” with succumbing to the brute force of the world in the face of trauma, rather than seeking empowerment. Her own World of Work actively revitalizes us from within.
The influences for this album span centuries: French philosophers, 12th-century letters, visions from Catholic Saints, and William Blake’s poetry. Each reference hinges on the inclusion of ecstasy in our daily lives. In visionary author Hildegard von Bingen’s Scivias, letters written in 1151, she speaks to the regenerative power of music, describing music as a tool to recapture the beauty of our heavenly origin, which we lose sight of when falling prey to worldly woe. The Catholic Saint Teresa of Avilla had a mystical vision in which the human soul was portrayed to her as a crystal castle. Echoing Bataille, who claimed that we are distracted by the world of work and “ignorant of our own nature;” St. Teresa’s philosophy was that “each of us has a soul, but we forget to value it.” At the centre of Teresa’s Interior Castle is absolute divine love, but to access it one must reflect upon all fears and desires. Similarly, William Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience follows the metamorphosis from childhood paradise to the hells of adulthood. Experience being the loss of Innocence at the hands of fear and desire. World of Work calls us to confront the spectres of fear and death that surround us. At the same time, it guides our attention to a flowering vitality both within ourselves and the world at large.
Born in Scotland, Clarissa Connelly relocated as a child to Denmark, where the cultural landscape has fuelled her creativity, through exploring the sacred sites, mythology, and music of Nordic culture. She first gained international attention with Tech Duinn (2018), a hypnotic album named after a spiritual gateway in Celtic myth. For her most recent album, The Voyager (2021), Clarissa physically walked the Scandinavian landscape, channelling melodies from ancient pre-Christian sites. To allow others to join virtually, Connelly developed an app called Vandringen that responds sonically to these sites. The album received global acclaim and was awarded the prestigious Nordic Music Prize which is a testament to her studious dedication to composition as a master's student at the prestigious Rhythmic Music Conservatory (CPH).
Other impressive accolades include opening for Jenny Hval across the UK & EU last year as well as taking part in Laurie Anderson’s choir. It’s also worth noting her recent premiere of Canons at Roskilde Festival, a choir piece that included Erika de Casier, Astrid Sonne, Henriette Motzfeldt (Smerz), and others.
