by Conor Lochrie (@conornoconnor)
Winter is the project of Samira Winter, a Brazilian native who relocated to Los Angeles. Her new album Endless Space (Between You & I) came out via Bar/None Records. A prolific releaser on Bandcamp, Winter was also known through her combination with Triptides (Glenn Brigman). Together they released the excellent Estrela Magica in 2018, which was inspired by the love and memory of Tropicalia music. Endless Space (Between You & I) is entirely a record of its own though, suffused with a purity that only true dream pop can provide. Everything is ethereal (unsurprising from the person who released an EP titled Ethereality in 2018) and the songs never cease to sparkle, awash as they are in technicolor reverie.
It feels like the work of a different artist to the one who released last year’s Hazy EP: those five songs were intimate lo-fi recordings, considerably more indebted to Beat Happening or Alex G than anyone with their head in the dream pop clouds. To listen to Endless Space (Between You & I), then, is like being allowed entry into Winter’s true and otherworldly plane of existence - she’s a Manic Pixie Dream Girl but with substance.
The record was mixed by Pat Jones, who’s worked with similar artists like Washed Out and Toro Y Moi in the past; his expertise helps the production on the songs to glisten. “Between You & I” swirls in like a Cocteau Twins track before ending abruptly. The title track then finds Winter’s falsetto at its most angelic as she sings the melancholic line “I wish I could take you home and have you here... I wish I could marry your soul and find you here”. It’s on songs like “Here I Am Existing” Winter appears like the reincarnation of the beloved Trish Keenan of Broadcast: that band’s skyward vocals and atmospheric synths are earmarked all over this record.
“In The Z Plane” acts as a momentary breather, Winter lowering her voice from its reaching falsetto as running water gushes around her. It’s delicate and intimate and the only time she sounds close to the sound of Hazy. Her Brazilian roots aren’t ignored as she sings in Portuguese on a couple of songs. “Memoria Colorida” was a previous release back in 2017 and “Ben No Fundo” is a wonderful duet with Boogarins’ Dinho Almeida. Their voices blend together as one under zapping synths and melodic keyboards.
Winter slows the tempo towards the end. “Wherever You Are” is a delicate shoegaze ballad before “Pure Magician” is all warped atmospherics and dripping water effects. “Cosmic force” and the “multiverse” are cited before the last line of the album arrives: “I’m the pure magician of my mind”. It’s an excellent and encapsulating end to what is a dream pop record of high quality.