Mimosa doesn’t have it easy. The name of the delicate plant that reacts to the slightest stimulus by folding its leaves is always used when it comes to mockingly accusing someone of being overly sensitive. Most recently, the plant, which is also known as the “shameful meaning plant,” had to be used in the Bundestag, for example, when Chancellor Olaf Scholz accused opposition leader Friedrich Merz of being happy to hand it out, but of being a mimosa when faced with criticism.
Now the question may arise as to whether it is more unpleasant for Friedrich Merz to be compared to a mimosa, or the other way around. Much more important at the moment, however, is the fact that someone has finally set about freeing the mimosa from its metaphorical misery. Her name has recently become the title of an album by someone in which sensitivity is more of a musical program than an occasion for ridicule.
The tracks by Nicolas Demuth, aka Parra for Cuva, who lives in Berlin, are based on a delicately melting fragility that stands out so clearly from the majority of productions from the German techno capital that fans of the gentler electronic style can hardly avoid him. Parra-for-Cuva music is music for all those who, after strenuous working days, would rather let the harmony of finely layered atmospheres woven into their hearts than dance their hearts out to powerful beats.
“Mimosa”, inspired by Demuth’s stay in the idyll of the northern Italian region of Liguria, is no exception. On the cover you find the artist with his eyes closed and a quiet smile in the middle of an exuberant display of flowers, and it sounds so organic.
You can hear tracks like the title track, which pulsates and swirls with a sweetness and warmth that at least contributes to the honor of the mimosa; listens to numbers like “Let it Burn”, which veers towards pop with uplifting chants, in collaboration with the Berlin vocal ensemble A Song For You originated; or with the fluffy, pumping “Amaro” an excursion into the danceable segment, which, with its subtly initiated energy, unfolds a beauty like a mimosa in full bloom.
Parra for Cuva, Saturday, May 25th, 7:30 p.m., Ampere, Zellstraße 4