MSEA

MSEA, the genre-bending solo project of Ontario-born, Reykjavík-based Maria-Carmela Raso announces
her fourth album, Our daily apocalypse walk.
Our daily apocalypse walk is a nightmare-pop album inspired by dream journal entries that MSEA began
writing during the pandemic. Filled with rich aural textures, the album sees whispered vocals melding
with ethereal keys, massive synths, haunting strings, aggressive beats and off-kilter rhythms. The
dreamlike soundscape evokes an unsettling form of embodied beauty, with songs full of tension and
release, sensuality and numbness, melancholy and joy. “[It’s] kinda like a Monday morning at some dingy
club in Berlin after a slightly too adventurous weekend. A less theatrical and more demented ANOHNI” -
Árni Hjörvar
Maria-Carmela Raso, who hails from Toronto, Canada and has been one of the Icelandic music scene’s
most prolific transplants. Cooperating, contributing, creating and performing with a wide variety of
artists from the local grassroots and underground DIY scenes, including Hatari and Kælan Mikla. She has
also lent her voice to film scores, commercials, choirs and compositions. She started MSEA as an
experimental solo project in Toronto, only to see it grow and blossom in the fertile creative soil of
Reykjavík, Iceland.

Building on the experience of three previous EP releases, Our daily apocalypse walk is MSEA’s first full-
length LP. The aforementioned dream journal which was the building block of the album’s themes and

songs was filled with vivid and bizarre dreams where otherworldly encounters meld with visions of
apocalypses, cyber horror, as well as the fantastical and delicate.
Maria-Carmela recounts how these dreams had a deep impact on her sense of self and loss thereof. “I
spent time reliving the dreams and writing them down every day. They created a surreal world for me to
live in musically, and I use quotes from them directly in some of the lyrics and atmosphere.” Another
influence was a long drive she took with her partner Ægir Sindri Bjarnason, who also plays drums on the
album. “We drove to the East fjords and there was thick enveloping fog for most of the trip. Hours and
hours of being consumed by fog. It was beautiful and isolating and suffocating all at once. I think this
imagery seeped its way into the album.”
MSEA’s music has often toyed with the juxtaposition of the harsh and the vulnerable with instrumentals
meeting her fragile and emphatic voice, and on the new album this relationship is taken to new levels.
The interplay between live instruments and electronic production is explored meticulously on Our daily
apocalypse walk, heightening the tension and further exploring the tenuous boundaries between beauty
and discomfort.
In addition to being an industrious vocalist, composer and producer, Maria-Carmela is also a productive
inter-arts curator and tastemaker, having created and managed a long-running music series in Reykjavík
called “Can’t think just feel” as well as several multidisciplinary exhibitions. She is deeply invested in the
inter-arts world and has exhibited her own sound artworks in Iceland, Finland, Poland, Canada, France,
the Czech Republic and more.
MSEA was recently selected as a 2023 participant to Keychange, a global network and movement
working towards gender equality in the music industry, as well as one of twelve selected for the Nordic
Lights program out of hundreds of applicants, which involved her performing a commissioned and
collaborative piece at the audio/visual festival Aavistus in Helsinki in 2022.
Our daily apocalypse walk was engineered, mixed and co-produced by Árni Hjörvar of The Vaccines and
Mammút fame and mastered by Gregg Dylan Janman of Hermetech mastering. The album was recorded

in part at Sigur Rós’ legendary studio Sundlaugin and features performances from Ægir Sindri Bjarnason
(drums), Julius Rothlaender (bass), Úlfur Alexander Einarsson (guitar), Sigurlaug Thorarensen (vocals),
Ana Luisa Diaz de Cossio (violin), Rún Árnadóttir (cello), Bergþóra Kristbergsdóttir (clarinet), as well as
Árni Hjörvar (bass, synthesizers), Laufey Soffía from Kælan Mikla (vocals) and Maria-Carmela herself
(vocals, production, synthesizers, a variety of sounds and instruments). Our daily apocalypse walk will
be released in early 2023.