GEA

In 2008, Mia released GEA on her own label, City Zen Records. The vinyl is being issued by Org Music in August 2020. Produced by Carlos Niño and featuring lush string and wind arrangements by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (Suite for Ma Dukes, Flying Lotus, Kamasi Washington), the album marks a great shift in Mia’s work from her folk-rock beginnings towards jazz and world music. The percussionist Andres Renteria entered Mia’s pantheon with GEA and would become a mainstay of her musical collaborators for the next decade. Josh Abrams plays upright and electric bass. The album opens with the raga-like, ten-minute epic, “River of Life / The Yes Song,” in which Mia’s voice soars over the pulse of nylon guitar and congas amidst the drone of the harmonium. In concert, Mia would sing and play guitar while pumping the harmonium with one foot, on the verge of her physical limits. Todd's lyrics on songs like the heartbroken "In the End” and “Kokoro” are plain-spoken and unpretentious, lending the songs an immediacy and a sense of personal connection that relates back to confessional singer/songwriter classics like Joni Mitchell's string of early-'70s albums.

After a peculiarly over-produced major label effort, 2002's The Golden State, and a far superior three-year stint on the electronic-oriented indie Plug Research, singer/songwriter Mia Doi Todd returns to her own City Zen imprint, last used for 2001's spartan Zeroone, for her sixth album.

Mia Doi Todd is an acquired taste, and at this point she’s not about to go crawling fawningly towards the mainstream by reneging on her now...