Laurel Halo


Territory: DE | AT | CH

Laurel Halo is an electronic music composer, performing artist and DJ, born in Detroit and based in Berlin. Drawing from a range of music lineages, her considered approach has enabled her to maintain a signature aesthetic across a stylistically diverse output, traversing pop, ambient, leftfield club, experimental electronica and film score.

Laurel’s debut album Quarantine (2012) was released by pioneering London label Hyperdub; it’s combination of raw vocals and cold electronics garnered critical acclaim, including the #1 Album of the Year accolade by The Wire Magazine.

Two instrumental long players followed—Chance of Rain (2013) for Hyperdub and In Situ (2015) for Honest Jon’s—in conjunction with extensive touring. Both albums were developed from Laurel Halo’s live sets during those years—melodic dancefloor material made with a hardware setup.

In 2015 Halo was invited to collaborate with John Cale on a bespoke live performance which debuted at the Hamer Hall in Melbourne, Australia. Throughout that year Halo also composed the soundtrack for Still Be Here, a collaborative installation piece starring the Japanese virtual popstar, Hatsune Miku. Still Be Here debuted in 2016 at Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, followed by appearances at the Barbican in London (2017) and the Miraikan Museum in Tokyo (2018).

Her fourth long player, Dust, was released in 2017 by Hyperdub, again to critical acclaim; it combined the hardware machine funk aesthetics of previous releases with loose, languid songwriting, and featured a number of collaborators (including Eli Keszler, Julia Holter, Lafawndah and Klein).

In 2018 Halo composed the score to the feature-length experimental documentary Possessed, directed by the Dutch design group Metahaven. She also released the mini-LP Raw Silk Uncut Wood on the Parisian label Latency that year; a collection of classically-inspired instrumentals, the album featured percussion by Eli Keszler, as well as LCO cellist Oliver Coates. She also held a DJ residency on Rinse.FM that year, following on from a four year DJ residency on Berlin Community Radio (2014-2018).

In 2019 Halo released her contribution to the landmark DJ-Kicks series, followed by an extensive DJ tour across Europe, North America and Asia. She also provided the soundtrack for Eckhaus Latta’s Fall 2019 collection, in addition to curating the second edition of the MODE Festival in London.

In 2020 Halo was an artist-in-residence at the Villa Aurora in Los Angeles. In addition she released the score to Possessed as a full-length album on London label Vinyl Factory.