The Estonian folk-tronica duo, Maarja Nuut and Ruum, will embark on a tour in Australia and New Zealand in March.
While combining vocal work with violin, Maarja Nuut’s music is a blend of Estonian folk traditions with contemporary experimental sounds. Since 2016, she has toured in over 50 countries around the world and found many culturally influential fans along the way. “That’s what it sounds like when the snow sings,” Simon Le Bon, the lead singer and lyricist of the band, Duran Duran, once remarked on Twitter about Nuut.
Since 2016, Nuut has collaborated with another Estonian artist, Ruum – aka Hendrik Kaljujärv – who has favoured electronic music since his earliest musical forays.
“In this collaboration, we both bring in our sound tools and musical thinking to the process,” Nuut said in a statement. “Then each complements the other in their own ways. It’s been a long process finding the balance, but I love the fact we both have space to express ourselves and somehow in the end these different worlds come together as something rather natural.”
Inner and outer space
In 2018, the artists also released an album together, entitled Muunduja, which the Quietus magazine called “one of the year’s most beautiful journeys through inner and outer space”.
The artists’ agency said in a statement that “with Maarja Nuut utilising violin, looper, vocal experiments and keyboard to capture her inner narratives and Ruum providing an abstract and mysterious electronic framework, their upcoming shows in Melbourne and Sydney promise to be as cerebrally confronting as they are entrancing”.
Apart from the concerts in Melbourne on 7 March and Sydney on 8 March, the duo will also perform at the WOMADelaide festival in Adelaide, Australia, from 9-11 March, and the WOMAD New Zealand festival from 15-17 March.
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Cover: Maarja Nuut and Ruum.
