interview
With its lo-fi camcorder aesthetic, and repeated shots of a chunky old desktop computer keyboard, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the music video for Sign Libra’s Le Chat was filmed back in the mid-’90s, and recently dug out of your parents’ attic. Yet Sign Libra – the artistic persona of Latvian musician Agata Melnikova – couldn’t be more 21st century.
Operating entirely in-the-box, Sign Libra creates arresting arrangements, dominated by her expressive, lyric-free vocalising. Fixated on the intricacy and beauty of nature in both a physical and personal sense, her albums to date (2018 debut Closer to the Equator, and 2020’s follow-up Sea to Sea) both explored different facets of the natural world, but Agata’s latest record, Hidden Beauty takes a more introspective angle. Across its ten tracks, she delves into the various facets of female nature. “I didn’t want this album to be straightforward in its concept, but rather like a collage, a puzzle,” Agata tells us. “There are personal themes, like loneliness, acceptance of your body, ageing, overcoming your fears. These topics are pretty serious, but with music I wanted to make them more lighthearted, keeping in a dreamy state of mind.”
