Will Happiness Find Me?

In November of 2011 Ms. Minerva accepted the invitation of a friend to flee East London winter for a temporary retreat to the seaside serenities of Lisbon. The psychic oasis freed her to retire inside an empty exhibition space to craft the 11 mercurial mysteries comprising her dizzying sophomore color wheel, Will Happiness Find Me? A spiraling patchwork of Maria's eclectic persuasions, the album spans future shock pirate radio, hermetic tone studies, wanderlust lullabies, tape-faded club cuts, sampladelic vocal experiments, private press art pranks, and ambient hip-hop melancholia. Given how frequently contempo aesthetics ebb from raw and odd to polished and accessible it’s uplifting to hear Maria swim so soulfully the opposite direction. “My heart is like a microphone / just talk into it.”

The experimental pop musician/laptop vagrant's second album marks the first time she's recorded in a proper studio, but that doesn't mean Maria Juur's suddenly courting a larger audience.